Voss the Unfilmable
Voss - An Opera in Two Acts
How the great Australian novel came to life on screen.
Voss is part of Australian literary legend. And though it has yet to be translated into a scripted feature, it is part of Australian film legend too; it is the great Australian film that simply can't be made.
Voss was the fifth novel published by Nobel Prize-winning Australian author Patrick White. Written in 1957, it is a fictionalised account of the life of Ludwig Leichhardt, a Prussian explorer who disappeared while attempting to conquer the Australian outback.
It is partly a tale of thwarted ambition - the doomed hubris of a man who thinks he can conquer the Australian landscape - and partly a love story. While Voss and his band explorers face drought and flooding rains, a young woman in Sydney, with whom Voss has shared a brief and intimate connection, continues a strange spiritual dialogue with her absent paramore.
A grand and vivid novel, Voss had great potential as a film, and various producers tried to adapt it for the screen. In the late sixties, a young entrepreneur named Harry M Miller struck a deal with White to make the film, enlisting director Ken Russell (Tommy) and screenwriter John McGrath, however the project was abandoned in the early seventies when the Australian Film Development Corporation refused to contribute funding.
According to the National Film and Sound Archive, White continued to work with various producers and screenwriters over the years, including American director Stuart Cooper and writer David Mercer, while actors including Max von Sydow, Maximillian Schell, Zachary Scott, Keith Michell and Jack Nicholson were approached to play the demanding title role. The film did not eventuate, however. White died in 1990, believing that the ghost of Ludwig Leichhardt had cursed the project in retribution for White's somewhat unflattering interpretation of his character.
Voss did make it to screen in 1988, though not as a scripted film. While the prospect of a feature was a non-starter, The Australian Opera recruited novelist David Malouf and composer Richard Meale to produce a grand operatic version of the story, to be directed by Jim Sharman. Originally conceived in 1979, Voss: An Opera in Two Acts finally made its debut in 1986, at The Adelaide Festival.
The original production, featuring baritone Geoffrey Chard in the title role and soprano Marilyn Richardson as his distant lover, was filmed at the Victorian Arts Centre on March 28 1987, and it remains the only version of White's spectacular tale to be caught on film.
Voss: An Opera in Two Acts screens as part of the Australian Perspectives program on Saturday 11 Dec and Saturday 18 December at 4pm. See the Voss film page for more information.
Published Wednesday, 8 December 2010
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