The Devil's Playground

The subject of a Catholic adolescence in a preparatory school for seminarians set in provincial Victoria, 1953, is substantially autobiographical which explains the engaging intimacy that Schepisi achieves in his first film. An unusual feature, given its subject, is the avoidance of a single point of view. It is not just the youths that are trapped by the Irish Catholic rigidities of the institution but the staff as well. The film does not question belief so much as the institutional distortions that are engendered by the imperatives of belief. Cast includes Arthur Dignam, Nick Tate, Simon Burke and Thomas Keneally.

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Credits

production company

Feature Film House Productions

producer/director

Fred Schepisi

Duration

01:38:00:00

Production places

Australia

Production dates

1976

Collection metadata

ACMI Identifier

016309

Language

English

Audience classification

MA

Subject categories

Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → Adolescence

Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → Catholic Church

Family, Gender Identity, Relationships & Sexuality → Adolescence

Feature films

Feature films → Feature films - Australia

Sound/audio

Sound

Colour

Holdings

VHS; Access Print (Section 1)

Collected

27 times

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Cite this work on Wikipedia

If you would like to cite this item, please use the following template: {{cite web |url=https://acmi.net.au/works/77913--the-devils-playground/ |title=The Devil's Playground |author=Australian Centre for the Moving Image |access-date=21 May 2022 |publisher=Australian Centre for the Moving Image}}

Australia, 1976