Not The Bill Collins Blog No.14: Alvin Purple

As a kid growing up in Australia in the 1970s I was fortunate enough to be able to start going to the cinema at a time when movies made by Australians for Australians for the first time since the 1940s and early 50s. There was "Storm Boy" and "Picnic at Hanging Rock', both iconic films from the early Aussie film renaissance which were judged safe enough for a child to watch. There were entries like "Caddie", "Sunday Too Far Away", "Don's Party" and "Peterson" which were all adult films but when screened on TV I could watch without too much disapproval.

Then there were the 'naughty' films; those Aussie flicks which in some way relied upon sex, the ocker character, coarse and simplistic humour and distinctly adults-only stories. "The Adventures of Barry MacKenzie" was one such film from my early memory, whilst "Stork" is another which hasn't as yet passed before my eyes.

And then there is "Alvin Purple".
Released in 1973 (when I was at the highly impressionable age of 8) "Alvin Purple" could be argued to be the most important film of the first five years of the decade in the Australian cinema revival. Certainly not because of its critical success (critics generally hated it). Nor because of its advent as one of the first movies filmed and distributed in Australia that took advantage of the then new 'R' rating. The importance of 'Alvin Purple' was that a contemporary sex farce could rake in the punters at the movie hourses and drive ins, and that whilst its lead character was hardly an 'ocker' (such as Barry McKenzie) he was an Australian character that a domestic audience enjoyed seeing as a hopeful reflection of themselves (if you were male), or as someone they could laugh at (both male and female).

At the heart of the film is a 'Candide' style journey undertaken by young Melbournian Alvin Purple (played with a simple affecting charm and sense of fun by Graeme Blundell) through sexual escapades and challenging relationships with women that either objectify him, mother him, exploit him or need to retreat from him. There's plenty of soft-core sex and a healthy mix of bawdy jokes, erotic symbolism, gender politics and semi-ocker swearing. At the time very confrontational nowadays there is almost a sweet naivety to the plot and the characters. Yet it actually succeeds as an exercise in making a profitable and generally entertaining film.

Frankly the whole central plot device of Alvin being irresistable to women and this being his entry point into a conman's psycho-sexual fraud is fairly redundant. You could empty out a lot of the plot, change the accents and maybe make it less sophisticated and this could be an Aussie 'Carry On...' film. And perhaps that is a flaw. On the other hand, how can a film be taken that seriously as an emblem of resurgant cultural imperatives when there's lots of bare bums and bare breasts courtesy of the likes of Abigail and Jacki Weaver (both looking decidedly good in a 1973 way).

Now for my own initial experience with this film I have to wander back 36 years when I was taken into Sydney on a trip to the movies. My mother, brother and I were blessed with the opportunity of seeing some Disney flick (buggered if I know which one) whilst my father went off to see "Alvion Purple". Either as an early indication of my innate naughtiness or a desire to do what grown ups do, I threw a reasonably strident tantrum protesting my need to see 'Alvin..' with my father. as you can imagine it got me nowhere. Dad saw his R rated Australian comedy, I saw something with animals or kids or some bloody thing.

Skip forward 30 odd years. "Alvin Purple" never dropped out of my memory and aside from seeing the purple Valiant Charger (as used in the sequel) at the annual district show in 1976 and viewing some of the ribald TV episodes on the ABC it was only when the DVD came out in 2007 that I had the chance to really sink my teeth into the film. It was a bit dated sure, and definitely politically incorrect. The humour was a bit thin on the ground but as a document of what Aussie cinema was capable of producing and in the process making decent money "Alvin Purple" was not a bad way to waste a tick over 90 minutes of my life.

My Rating: 2 Bills