Retrospective: Muloorina (1964)

[David N. Butterworth]

MULOORINA (1964)
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2016 David N. Butterworth

**1/2 (out of ****)

Misspelled (as "Muloornia") on countless filmographies until it was posted
on YouTube by its director David Cobham some fifty years after it was made,
the John Barry-scored, British Petroleum-produced short film "Muloorina"
chronicles the aborted attempt by British speed demon Donald Campbell (1921
- 1967) to break the world land speed record in his famous Bluebird CN7 in
May of 1963. The venue was Muloorina, South Australia, a rugged outback
settlement adjacent to the vast Lake Eyre. It hadn't rained in the region
for an eternity (estimates vary between nine and twenty years) and
conditions were said to be perfect on the dried-up salt bed. Cobham's
spry, 27-minute film starts out by focusing on the Price family--patriarch
Eliott Price narrates with a lyrical insouciance--that farms this
inhospitable land, raising livestock. Times are tough, belying the
homestead's name (Muloorina is Australian for "plenty of tucker"), and it
is with some financial relief that the family welcomes Campbell and his
entourage into their fold, providing food, shelter, and other resources for
the latest world-record attempt. The film documents Campbell's ramp-up
towards the final run which never came to fruition, because the rains came
instead. Light at first and then torrential, the storm flooded the area
and caused the project to be abandoned. Campbell would return to Lake Eyre
the following year, however, and finally fulfill his dream (403.10 mph)
prior to his fatal world water speed record attempt three years later--I
was only five years old at the time but can still recall the shocking
footage of Campbell's Bluebird K7 somersaulting on Cumbria's Coniston Water
in January, 1967. Wall-to-wall music, at times dramatic, playful, and
somber, orchestrates Campbell's first visit to Lake Eyre, and "Muloorina"
proves a capable and fitting tribute to a man who just had to go faster.

--
David N. Butterworth
rec.arts.movies.reviews
butterwo...@gmail.com