Alvin Purple

The Australian film revival did not begin with “Picnic at Hanging Rock” but with ocker comedy seen in “Stork”, “Barry McKenzie” and “Alvin Purple”. The latter remains one of the most profitable Australian films yet produced. Its popularity clearly reflected the moment - with the relaxation of censorship in the early seventies, a high spirited sex comedy in the Australian idiom had special appeal for Australian audiences. Alvin (Graeme Blundell) is an ordinary young man desiring a quiet life whose very ordinariness seems irresistible to women. The comedy is based on incongruity. Sex is rendered as slapstick. Jokes are at the expense of bastions of hypocrisy - psychiatry, the press and the law. The would-be recessive hero is the object of male sexual fantsy - sex without responsibility - a fantasy with which women could also apparently identify.