Copyright Statement - ResearchSpace@Auckland

341
through.” The writer saw Runaway’s local setting and content as the key ingredients
for success with local audiences. “We have lived for so long on imported screen
entertainment that none of us realises how starved we are for a change which can
offer something characteristic of the local scene, either in incident or dialogue. Thus
some of the vignettes of characterisation, fragments of incident and snatches of
dialogue and slang may well be the ingredients of Runaway which the New Zealand
customer will relish most.”
So much for the attempt to review the film “against the standards of the professional
theatre!” The recognition of “fragments” seems a more generous and certainly a more
locally specific measure.
In a reference to the James Dean film of a decade earlier, the Herald described
Runaway as having a story “of another rebel without a cause … it is a role for James
Dean and his ilk, among whom Colin Broadley does not belong. Casting against type
can bring notable success on occasions, but this is not one of them”. The reviewer did
not expand on what appears to be an assumption that a rebel should be played by a
young actor, preferably in the American style. What was clear once again was the
inability of reviewers to understand and relate to the type of alienated figure which
Graham and O’Shea had created, in some respects more “man alone” – and in some
respects more characteristic of European art cinema – than Hollywood rebels such as
Dean and Brando. The Herald did, however, praise Broadley for his acting in
“certain Hokianga scenes and in the excellent sequence he shares with Gil Cornwall”.
Deirdre McCarron was seen as a “more sympathetic figure … for she brings to the
screen a natural grace and charm which engender the sympathy of the audience”. In
conclusion, the Herald reviewer acknowledged that the film had some strengths,
including the Hokianga dance hall sequences, the title song, the highway landscapes
of the North Island, and the “vastness of Westland [where] Runaway rivets attention
and will draw deserved appreciation”. But the reviewer found the ending unrealistic:
“I do not think a Kiwi party of policemen and mountaineers would let their quarry go
in the way the film allows”. The review ended on a positive note – as a final
contradiction of its opening position – by expressing “three cheers for John O’Shea
and his company.” 35