The Sundowners

A film set in Australia in the 1920s. Paddy drives sheep. He takes a flock from one place to another, is paid when the job ends, and sets off again. His family travels with him. Ida and their son Sean live in a horse-drawn wagon; they have no house and never stay anywhere more than two months. Ida is tired of it. She wants a house, wants her son to go to school, and tells her husband so. Paddy does not understand. To him, being tied to a house is captivity. An offer comes. There is shearing work at a station; they could stay a few months and save. Ida sees an opportunity. They will put money aside and buy a farm. From there the film runs across a season. Shearing contests, a horse, a wager, a fire and a harvest. Paddy saves the money. Then a race comes up and he buys a horse. What the narrative is interested in is not poverty but restlessness: Paddy is not a bad man; he simply does not want to stop, and the film shows this neither as a fault nor as freedom. Ida's line is at the centre. She loves her husband, does not try to change him, and still does not give up what she wants. The son's line runs quietly. Sean is between becoming his father and the life his mother wants. The landscape is part of the narrative. It was shot in Australia and the flock scenes are at real scale. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards and won none. Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum, Peter Ustinov and Glynis Johns are in the cast. Fred Zinnemann directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes the quiet family films of classical Hollywood. Who it is not for: anyone looking for plot; the narrative is deliberately without incident and runs past two hours.