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really that serious and hardly warranted a self-chosen death. While a neat ending is
not a compulsory requirement, a film has to provide viewers with information on
which to base their speculations. Runaway should have included the final scripted
scene of the conversation between Athol and David’s former girlfriend Sandra.
Despite its brevity, this scene would have been more substantial than what John
Graham dismissed as David’s “plaintive bleat [‘Diana’] from the snow ridge.” 4
Sandra’s attitude is uncaring and predatory while Athol is wistful and disturbed by his
friend’s fate. Both mirror attitudes and values that the audience could have
understood, and it might have helped each viewer to define his or her own position.
Juxtaposed with Athol and Sandra’s comments, the seagull, as the final shot, would
have provided a visual link with the opening beach sequence and its symbolism of
freedom, loneliness, and escape and might have conveyed a stronger sense of
catharsis than the somewhat abrupt ending of the completed film.
In listing these missing sequences, however, one must bear in mind the successful
nature of the shoot. It is remarkable that O’Shea managed to cover as much as he did.
The editing of any film is, to some extent, a salvage job, and the editing job that John
O’Shea and Tony Williams did on Runaway was certainly no exception.
Dubbing
Although the dialogue had been recorded on location, it had all to be re-recorded in a
Wellington studio using the original or substitute actors. Although Runaway was
determinedly a New Zealand production in a New Zealand setting, the desire to give it
more of an “English sound” was apparent in the dubbing. In the early 1960s an
educated British accent was still regarded as the norm in drama, for local as well as
overseas audiences. Although British dramas such as Karel Reisz’s Saturday Night
and Sunday Morning (1960) and Tony Richardson’s A Taste of Honey (1961) had
featured characters “markedly less mannered, particularly in their use of abrasive
vernacular speech,” 5 “correct” or “standard” English, as spoken by handsome young
stars such as Dirk Bogarde, Richard Burton, Laurence Harvey, Kenneth Moore,
Laurence Olivier, Peter O’Toole and Richard Todd were still imitated by New
Zealand actors. O’Shea was mindful of the need to produce a film that would appeal
to overseas audiences. He therefore decided not to challenge local habits in drama,
but to have the main characters speaking with educated British accents. Paradoxically