Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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film was praised for its evocation of horror: “Ward evokes more horror with his play of
light and shadow in this low-budget movie than Stanley Kubrick was able to create in
all of The Shining. Finally, what Ward expresses is the devastating horror of utter
loneliness”. The same article discussed Ward’s unquestionable talent and described
both the films as being “unusually poetic”. 434 An article in the Los Angeles Times
announced that: “Perhaps the most original talent of New Zealand’s First Wave belongs
to 24-year-old Vincent Ward”. It described A State of Siege as “a stunning, almost
surreal evocation of the disintegration of a spinster schoolteacher” and Ann Flannery as
“a remarkable actress”. 435 The Minneapolis Star described the film as “strikingly
visual” and commented that “the images carry both [Ward’s] films beautifully”. 436 A
later review in the Los Angeles Times perceptively singled out for comment the use of
light, shade and texture in the film:
Early on in A State of Siege we glimpse Malfred instructing her pupils on the
importance of texture, proportion and shadowing – elements with which Ward
himself has taken extraordinary pains in the making of his films. Both are
rigorously constructed with one exquisitely composed image following another
and incorporating a highly expressive play of light and darkness. 437
In the American reviews, White is not mentioned as a collaborator on the film – no
doubt due to the fact that the film was screened together with Ward’s In Spring One
Plants Alone, a project in which White was not involved.
The film also screened in Sydney in a program introducing four films by young
filmmakers from New Zealand, entitled “Compromise, Risk”. A New Zealand Film
Commission writeup quotes a review by Meaghan Morris in the Sydney Morning
Herald describing the film as: “A taut and sensitive treatment of an ageing spinster’s
retreat into isolation, memory and madness. Magnificently photographed by Alun
Bollinger and with a superb performance by Anne Flannery, A State of Siege achieves a
tense and strange poetry of life in a social and spiritual backwater, whose apparent
uniformity and calm holds unfamiliar experience and unknown dangers”. 438
434 Stone, "A Hypnotic Look at an Old Woman," 61.
435 "The Film Biz of New Zealand," Los Angeles Times 27 July 1980.
436 Joanna Connors, "New Zealand Films," The Minneapolis Star 18 November 1980.
437 Kevin Thomas, "New Zealand Women - Two Portraits," Los Angeles Times 14 March 1981.
438 New Zealand Film Commission advertising for A State of Siege.