Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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“Even now, after hearing this story for years, I am still amused by the Errol Flynn
bravado of it all and moved by his acting so desperately out of a real love for a woman
he had only seen for a week”. 220
Ward also comments on being struck by the chance nature of events in his parents’ love
story. The story as he tells it was that:
Before my father returned to Cairo, my mother went home to Haifa, and they
agreed to meet under the clock outside Barclay’s Bank there to say goodbye. He
waited for an hour, not knowing that she’d been very ill. Pat realized then that
he did not know my mother’s last name or where she lived. He had no idea how
to get in touch with her again. He was just about to go when he saw her running
through the crowds towards him (and here I am decades later urging her to run
faster, urging him not to go yet, otherwise they will never see each other again
and their story will never be finished). 221
Ward’s parents’ experiences have had a considerable influence on his work. Louis
Nowra, who later worked with Ward as script-writer on Map of the Human Heart,
comments that the idea of fate and the notion of scarring (from his father being burned
by petrol in the war) are threads which run through his work. 222 Bridget Ikin, who was
a production assistant on Vigil, contends that: “a lot of his films were inspired by her
[his mother]” and cites as an example “the woman transplanted in Vigil, the urban
woman come to live in the backblocks”. She also comments that some of the later films
“seemed to be a poem to his parents’ marriage […], the power of their love for each
other and the context in which they met through the war” She believes “he’s been very
affected by his perception of his parents”. 223
Back in New Zealand, Edith, who had taken the name Jehudit in Israel, came to be
known as Judy. She comments on the difficulties of fitting in with the farming
community in the Wairarapa:
I found the people very very nice, but keeping me at arm’s length. They were
very polite […] but I couldn’t get close to them because they were too polite
220 Ward, Edge of the Earth: Stories and Images from the Antipodes 54.
221 Ward, Edge of the Earth: Stories and Images from the Antipodes 52.
222 Lynette Read, interview with Louis Nowra, 29 February 2000.
223 Lynette Read, interview with Bridget Ikin, 27 September 1999.