New Restoration

“An eerie and profound masterpiece.”

Kevin Maher, The Times

Peter Weir’s dreamy, mystical film, one of the breakout works of the Australian New Wave, adapts Joan Lindsay’s acclaimed 1967 novel. In the state of Victoria on Valentine’s Day 1900, students of an elite school for young women embark on an outing to Hanging Rock, an unusual geological formation with spiritual significance to the area’s Indigenous peoples. There, three students and a teacher mysteriously disappear. Lindsay’s haunting book slyly hints at a basis in actual events but is probably entirely fictive—although on that point some mystery lingers! Weir’s disquieting film has existential menace and sexual hysteria simmering beneath its hypnotically beautiful surface, and a supernatural suggestiveness that takes it tantalizingly close to horror-movie territory. This lush 50th anniversary restoration is actually of the 1998 director’s cut of the film, which prunes seven minutes off the original runtime.

“One of the most hauntingly beautiful mysteries ever created on film.”

Peter Stack, San Francisco Chronicle
Media