 Starring: John Meillon, Terry Camilerri, Kevin Miles, Rick Scully
Director: Peter Weir
Year Of Release: 1974
Plot: In rural Australia, two brothers have a car accident, which kills one of them. The survivor, George, is then inducted into life in the town of Paris, a somewhat odd community that seems to have more than its fair share of accidents and car crash victims. There are also various factions in the town whose disagreements seem to be building to a crescendo. As George learns more, he realises that leaving town is not an option, and the crashes may not be as accidental as they first appeared. |
What to say about The Cars That Ate Paris? It is a very, very strange movie. Perhaps the first thing to point out is that no people or places called Paris get eaten by cars during the film. It’s one of those movie titles where you feel they didn’t quite know what to do with the film and so they came up with a title that seemed to promise the sort of horror carnage the movie doesn’t actually deliver. Oh, and the Paris in question isn't in France, it's a small town in Australia.
In fact while The Cars That Ate Paris has elements of horror, it’s also a dark comedy, a bit of a thriller, more than a touch surreal and just very, very weird. The whole idea of an auto-obsessed town built on the economics of causing car crashes in order to strip the vehicles and people for scrap is an interesting one, but the way its handled means the film is incredibly odd. There’s the brain-damaged veggies who a doctor is doing unexplained experiments on, the mayor who’s obsessed with ensuring nobody is allowed to leave town, a growing feud between a group of young people (simply called The Cars) and the elder statesmen, and the weirdly ‘pimped’ vehicles the young people drive around in. It’s just plain weird.
It’s been noted before that Australia is a bit obsessed with cars, probably because the vast open spaces meaning they’re more vital than in most countries. As a result quite a lot of Australian films, from Mad Max to Priscilla, have dealt with vehicles, although few are as strange as The Cars That Ate Paris. When watching the movie, it’s difficult not to feel that the film is some sort of social comment on Australia in the mid-70s, but not being Australian or from the mid-70s, I’m not entirely sure what points the film is trying to make. As a result you’re just left with a film that’s rather intriguing but incredibly peculiar.
Although not a movie for everyone, it is notable for being the first feature length film by Peter Weir. The director apparently got the idea for The Cars That Ate Paris in France, when he was driving along and men in orange suits told him the road ahead was closed and he had to take a backwaters diversion. As he couldn’t see any sign of roadworks, it made him realise how easily we take people’s word if they look the part. He also saw a newspaper that made a big deal of a single murder, while relegating 23 car crash fatalities to a byline, which cause him to think that if you wanna get away with murder, killing someone in a car crash is the way to do it. From that The Cars That Ate Paris was born.
Weir made the film a year before shooting the far superior Picnic At Hanging Rock, by which time he’d managed to refined his sense of the strange to create a film where not explaining things is unnerving and ethereal, rather than just plain odd.
The director has since gone on to become one of the most interesting filmmakers around, helming an eclectic mix of movies including The Last Wave, Gallipoli, The Year Of Living Dangerously, Witness, Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show and Master & Commander. He’s certainly got a fascinating resume, and it all started with his very weird movie about a town that survives on crashing cars.
To be honest, The Cars That Ate Paris would have probably been completely forgotten if it weren’t for Weir’s later movies, but it certainly stands as a fascinating starting point to a wonderful director’s career.
TIM ISAAC
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