An international cast boasting familiar faces as well as stars from the UK and Europe featured, alongside Chiari, Claire Dunne, Chips Rafferty, Slim DeGrey, Aida Chelli, Ed Devereaux and John Meillon. I was also surprised to discover that the book was not written by an Italian, but by Australian John OGrady, under the pseudonym Nino Culotta. In its jocular way, They’re a Weird Mob was one of the first locally produced films to deal openly with latent xenophobia and prejudice against 'new Australians'. Its very cheesy of course, but then just about everything made in the 1960s. I have only just seen Theyre a Weird Mob and I have to say it was a great trip back to the 1960s in Australia. The other, Age of Consent (1969), starred a young Helen Mirren based on a Norman Lindsay novel it was shot on Dunk Island. Nino Culotta is an Italian immigrant who arrived in Australia with the promise of a job as a journalist on his cousins magazine, only to find that wh. Curator's NoteĪdapted from Nino Culotta’s – aka John O’Grady’s – comic novel set in Menzies-era Australia, They’re a Weird Mob was the first of two features shot on location in Australia by lauded British director Michael Powell ( The Red Shoes, Peeping Tom). At a loose end in a foreign country with limited knowledge of its social customs, Nino lands a job as a builder’s labourer, where he gets a fast lesson in the local vernacular and Australian way of life. Nino – Italian film star Walter Chiari ( Bellissima) – is a visiting sports reporter in over his head when he arrives in Sydney expecting to work for a bilingual magazine but discovers his contact has skipped town.
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