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he had seen earlier as he gazed over the side of the Cook Strait ferry. In the finished
film the low angle shot of David Manning’s face, if scrutinised carefully, showed
momentary flashes of light. Carefully contrived symbolism as to his confused state of
mind? Unfortunately the real reason was processing problems. Much of the footage
of this difficult sequence was ruined as the result of a laboratory accident leaving the
director to salvage what he could. This was probably “the most significant problem”
he had to face during the making of the film. In his words:
The whole scene of Diana falling out of the boat [had to be] changed
completely because of an accident that had nothing to do with anything other
than the fact that when the material went to the laboratory there was a printing
breakdown, a negative processing breakdown and we only had a fraction of
the 800 feet we shot. That had a characteristic blemish every 18 th frame; for
2 frames it flared out and if you look at the film very closely you’ll realise we
used some of those shots because we had to make the sequence hold up at all.
We’d been to that damn lake for 12 days at a 3am start to get there at dawn
and it was infuriating to find, when we finally got it shot, that it was damaged
in the processing. So we used a little bit of it but of course it wasn’t used in
the way we had expected to. I had to use scenes from him looking over the
side of the ship as it came to the South Island and all that whole motif was
reintroduced to build up that particular scene, [to] recreate a sense of guilt on
his part. 23
Unfortunately, the completed sequence confused everyone, both actors and audience.
David’s hesitation as he watches her floundering was to be shown in separate shots
edited together but Broadley was unclear about his motivation or the timing of his
actions. “I didn’t discuss it with John. I had no motivation for saying anything much,
and I was just puzzled about what my reaction to this was supposed to be. Here was
me, trying to be an actor reacting, and wondering what my reaction was supposed to
be … [so] it’s not as well done as I feel it could have been.” 24 It was an example of
how practical problems can sometimes overwhelm the finer points of acting or
directing.