Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 15

John O’Shea and the Tradition of New Zealand Cinema

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Government lost the elections at the end of 1949, the ‘private enterprise’
National Government under Sid Holland only had strength to question
but not to command the instruments of the previous government —
for which the National Film Unit was a leading but pallid propagandist.
Were we not making a film for ‘money’ — that despicable word —
hoping to sell it to audiences ?! (O’Shea 40)
In the social and political climate of the time, such an endeavor was not only
unthinkable, it was revolutionary. O’Shea and Mirams called upon their friends at
Movietone News to assist them in the final completion of the film; they were not
disappointed. O ’Shea’s friends came to the rescue again:
Much later in the year of its making, we shot more for Broken Barrier
on money friends lent us. In Sydney, mates at Movietone News rallied
round, thanks to Roger. The newsreel’s editor did a fine-cut of our edit
and matched the negative at night in his kitchen. We just had enough
money to record a score in Sydney, then some sound effects and a
number of voices when we returned to Wellington. With Ian C. A.
Houston running track-laying, we had all optical prints in 1951. Ian
was able to manufacture a soundtrack with only two sync and eight
wild tracks hustled together on non-sync recorders. The mix was
finished at 2.30 a.m. on 10 December 1951. [The] world premiere of
Broken Barrier was held on 10 July 1952 with the Governor-General,
Sir Bernard Freyberg present, hordes of black ties and evening dresses,
a brass band, floodlights, marching girls — and a packed house.
(O’Shea 41)
Surprisingly, given the fact the topic was so inherently controversial (or perhaps
because of it), the film was an enormous commercial success, and became a
landmark in the nascent New Zealand cinema. Spyros Skouras of 20th Century
Fox saw the film and offered O ’Shea and Mirams a trip to Hollywood, with an eye
towards a possible production deal, but O ’Shea, angered over the HU AC / Joseph
McCarthy hearings then underway in the United States, declined the offer, just as
he had also passed up a graduate assistantship position at Princeton University a
number of years previously for much the same reasosns (O’Shea 42). O ’Shea’s
heart and mind were firmly rooted in the culture and soil of New Zealand, and he
had no intention of leaving — rather, he wanted to press on with the production of
more feature films. For the moment, however, both men went back into the service
of Fox Movietone News, while O’Shea kept Pacific Films alive as a sideline.
Working as a team, O’Shea and Mirams photographed Queen Elizabeth’s 1953