Gallipoli [Includes Digital Copy] [Blu-ray]

Director: Peter Weir

Overview

This film follows two idealistic young friends who join the Australian army in WWI and fight the doomed battle of Gallipoli in Turkey. The first half of the film documents the friends' lives in Australia, detailing their personalities. The second half of the movie chronicles the ill-fated and ill-planned battle.

Product Details

Release Date:	01/31/2023
UPC:	0191329239490
Original Release:	1981
Rating:	PG
Source:	Paramount
Language:	English
Time:	1:51:00
Sales rank:	9,748

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Mark Lee	Archy
Mel Gibson	Frank Dunne
Bill Kerr	Jack
Ron Graham	Hamilton,Wallace Hamilton
Harold Hopkins	McCann
Charles Yunupingu	Zac
Heath Harris	Stockman
Robert Grubb	Billy
Tim McKenzie	Barney
David Argue	Snowy
Bill Hunter	Maj. Barton
Gerda Nicolson	Rose Hamilton
Reg Evans	Official
Jack Giddy	Official
Dane Peterson	Announcer
Paul Linkson	Recruiting Officer
Jenny Lovell	Waitress
Steve Dodd	Billy Snakeskin
Robyn Galwey	Mary
Don Quin	Lionel
Phyllis Burford	Laura
Marjorie Irving	Gran
John Murphy	Dan Dunne
Diane Chamberlain	Anne Barton
Ian Govett	Army Doctor
Geoff Parry	Sgt. Sayers
Clive Bennington	English Officer
Giles Holland-Martin	English Officer
Moshe Kedem	Egyptian Shopkeeper
John Morris	Col. Robinson
Don Barker	NCO at Ball
Kiwi White	Soldier on Beach
Paul Sonkkila	Sniper
Peter Lawless	Observer
Saltbush Baldock	Sentry
Les Dayman	Artillery Officer
Stan Green	Sgt. Major
Max Wearing	Col. White
Graham Dow	Gen. Gardner
Peter R. House	Radio Officer
Harold Baigent	Camel Driver
Peter Ford	Lieutenant Gray
Brian Anderson	Railway Foreman
Brian May	Composer

Technical Credits

Peter Weir

David Williamson

Patricia Lovell	Producer
Francis O'Brien	Executive Producer
Robert Stigwood	Producer
Ben Gannon	Producer
Chris Murray	Special Effects
Alison Barrett	Casting
Mont Fieguth	Special Effects
Peter Weir	Screenwriter
David Williamson	Screenwriter
Steven Richard Courtley	Special Effects

Editorial Reviews

This ambitious 1981 Australian epic boosted the international stock of leading man Mel Gibson -- already a cult favorite as a result of his work in Mad Max (1979) -- and helped make him a legitimate movie star. An intelligently written, finely calibrated story focusing on the relationship of two men enveloped by war, it also tagged director Peter Weir (Witness) as a filmmaker to be reckoned with. The 1915 Battle of Gallipoli, a signal event in the first World War, is to Australians what the siege of the Alamo is to Americans: a heartbreaking defeat rationalized over the years into a tremendous moral victory. It began when a modest army of Australian and New Zealand troops attempted to capture Istanbul and thus control the Dardanelles waterway. When Allied generals bungled the assault, the defending Turks rallied and subsequently inflicted heavy losses on the would-be invaders. In this movie, Weir more than adequately covers the historical record, but he never allows the siege to overwhelm the story of Frank Dunne (Gibson) and Archy Hamilton (Mark Lee), whose unlikely friendship is forged on the battlefield in the midst of bitter fighting and much bloodshed. The conflict is dramatized in Weir’s skillful depiction of battle scenes but also on a more intimate scale, seen through the eyes of the men embroiled in it. Gibson, playing the up-and-coming track star who abandons a promising career to enlist in the Australian Army Corps, exhibits a sensitivity that at this time had not yet been manifest in his acting. He makes Frank thoroughly believable, helping turn what might have been a routine war movie into a profoundly moving drama. In this he admirably serves Weir’s vision, which encompasses the human aspects of the war as well as the “big picture” details of the siege itself. Gallipoli triumphs at several levels, but its greatest accomplishment was establishing Gibson as a serious leading man, and it remains one of his finest motion pictures.