Charles Chauvel (filmmaker)

Family

Charles Edward Chauvel was born on 7 October 1897 in Warwick, Queensland, the son of James Allan Chauvel and his wife Susan Isabella (née Barnes), pioneer farmers in the Mutdapilly area. He was the nephew of General Sir Harry Chauvel, Commander of the Australian Light Horse and later the Desert Mounted Corps in Palestine during World War I. His father, a grazier, at 53 also enlisted to serve in Palestine and Sinai in World War I. The Chauvels were descended from a French Huguenot family who fled France for England in 1685, and soon established a tradition of serving in the British army. The Australian Chauvels descended from a Charles Chauvel who retired from the Indian Army to New South Wales in 1839 and was a pioneer in the New England region.

Chauvel was educated at the Normanby State School (now the Mutdapilly State School), The Southport School and Ipswich Grammar School in Queensland.

Early Work in Film Industry

After leaving school, he worked on Queensland properties, and on his family property when his father was at war, before studying commercial art and taking drama classes in Sydney. He was fascinated by films and pestered a friend, showman Reginald "Snowy" Baker, to give him work as a production assistant; usually, he was the man in charge of the horses. Chauvel worked on The Shadow of Lightning Ridge (1920) and The Jackeroo of Coolabong (1920) with Baker; he also assisted on Robbery Under Arms (1920)

He designed the St Aidan's Church of England in Mutdapilly in 1921 (the church closed in 1974 and is now used as a private residence).

Hollywood

Chauvel followed Baker to Hollywood in 1922, at his own expense, and spent some time as a jack of all trades including working as an extra, a lighting technician, a publicist, a stunt double and so on. The films he worked on included Strangers of the Night (1923).

Moth of Moonbi (1926)

Back in Australia after about a year, Chauvel obtained finance from Queensland businessmen and friends to make his first film The Moth of Moonbi. It was a romantic melodramas exploring a theme of the decadent city vs the authentic country. The Moth of Moonbi is a country girl who flutters to the city lights, loses her fortune, but eventually returns home and finds love with her father's trusty stockman.

The film was profitable enough for Chauvel to raise funds for a second film.

Greenhide (1926)

In Greenhide a city girl struggles to cope on a cattle station and gradually finds love with her polar opposite, an extremely taciturn bushman. Like Moonbi the film was made in Harrisville near Brisbane, enlisting the locals as extras and using locations around his family property "Summerlands", near the edge of town. While making Greenhide he met Elsa May Wilcox (professional name Elsa Sylvaney), an actress, whom he married on 1927. After their marriage she traveled with him and assisted him on all his films.

Both these silent films were released in 1926 and were reasonably successful in Australia. Unfortunately Chauvel could not arrange for the release of his silent movies in Hollywood because of the transition to sound.

Chauvel returned to Australia and worked as a cinema manager during the Depression.

In the Wake of the Bounty (1933)

In 1933 he made his first talkie: In the Wake of the Bounty starring Errol Flynn as Fletcher Christian before Flynn went on to Hollywood. The film mixed re-enactments with documentary, and focused not so much on the mutiny itself as on its consequences. To provide a long postscript to the story of the mutiny, the Chauvels went to Pitcairn Island and shot interesting footage of the Bounty descendants, spending three months on the island. He also included footage of bare-breasted Tahitian dancers which caused a temporary problem with the censors. The documentary parts were later edited out and used as promotional material for the 1935 Hollywood film about the mutiny.

Heritage (1935)

In 1935, Chauvel won a Commonwealth Government competition for Heritage which gave a panoramic view of Australian history. It begins with a character from the earliest days of white settlement (1788), following his struggles, his loves and his marriage, then skips to the modern generation, where a romance between descendants of the original characters completes a circle. The modern hero is struggling to run an outback cattle station, the modern heroine is an expert aviator.

Uncivilised (1936)

In 1936 he made Uncivilised, a "jungle story" filmed in Cape York. Aimed at the U.S. market, it is the story of an upper class 'girl-reporter' investigating the white leader of an aboriginal tribe.

That year also saw the release of Rangle River (1936), based on a script by Charles and Elsa Chauvel.

Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940)

The outbreak of war meant that Chauvel turned to war-themed films, making Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940), a tribute to the Australian Light Horse Brigade in Palestine in World War I, in the Cronulla sand dunes. It was both a popular and critical success and was credited with boosting morale. It also launched the career of actor Chips Rafferty.

Chauvel then focused on making a series of propaganda shorts for the Australian war effort including Soldiers Without Uniform (1942).

Rats of Toburk (1944)

Chauvel attempt to repeat his Horseman success with The Rats of Tobruk in 1944. It was not as successful.

Sons of Matthew (1949)

After the war he made a film about a pioneer family in Queensland, Sons of Matthew (1949), drawing on his own family history

Jedda (1955)

In 1955 Chauvel made perhaps his best known film, Jedda. Jedda is a story of an Aboriginal baby girl raised by a white station owner and kept in ignorance of traditional ways, and the Aboriginal man who carries her off, even though this is a forbidden "wrong way" marriage, and brings tragedy to both of them.

Both Jedda and Matthew involved travel to remote areas and difficult conditions for filming, and are considered Chauvel's best works. Jedda was the first Australian feature film made in colour, and had to be developed overseas as there were no colour processing facilities in Australia. For Jedda, the Chauvels sought out Aboriginal people for the lead roles, and in Robert Tudawali, playing the male lead, they found someone with great natural ability. Both these films were made in a period when the Australian film industry had virtually collapsed, unable to compete with imported films.

Final years and death

After this, Chauvel turned to television, making the BBC series Walkabout which travelled to interesting locations in Australia. He died unexpectedly of coronary vascular disease in 1959. According to Ken G. Hall, Chauvel had left a message asking to speak to Hall on the day he died, and left an estate worth ₤32,000.

Legacy

Since 1992 the Brisbane International Film Festival has awarded a Chauvel Award to a "distinguished contributor to Australian Cinema".

An art-house cinema, the Chauvel Cinema, in the suburb of Paddington, Sydney is named after him.

Chauvel was posthumously inducted into the Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame in 2013.

In 2009 as part of the Q150 celebrations, Charles Chauvel was announced as one of the Q150 Icons of Queensland for his role as an "Influential Artists".

Unmade projects

Chauvel announced a number of projects over the years that were not made, including: