Unsung Auteurs: Graeme Clifford | FilmInk

When it comes to the arts, the Australian media loves nothing more to sing the praises of our creatives who find success overseas. Anyone that has achieved even a remote level of international recognition immediately has the prefix “Australia’s own” attached to their name. The media also likes to claim successful figures as “ours” even if they were born elsewhere and spelt only a minimal part of their lives here. All of which makes it more confounding when an internationally successful figure is practically ignored, such as, say, the late Colin Higgins, who was also featured in the Unsung Auteurs column.

All of which brings us to director Graeme Clifford, whose limited big screen output, and status as something of a “journeyman” director and TV helmer, has seen only minor discussion of this very, very talented figure. Prior to his work as a director, Graeme Clifford worked successfully as an editor and casting director on some of the – no overstatement here – best films ever made. Clifford has indeed made a few excellent films, but it is the entirety of his achievements that makes him a more than worthy addition to the Unsung Auteurs column.

Born in Sydney in 1942, Graeme Clifford learned a wide variety of filmmaking skills (editing, special effects, sound recording/mixing, animation and assistant directing) at Artransa Park, the only studio of any real note operating in Sydney for many years. In 1964, Clifford shipped out to London, where he eventually used the skills he’d developed in Sydney to find work at the BBC in their editing department. From there, Clifford then moved to Vancouver, Canada, where he worked as an editor in TV commercials and documentaries. In what would be a life-changing, career-defining meeting, it was in Canada that Clifford that crossed paths with legendary American director Robert Altman. Impressed with the work that Clifford had been doing, Altman handed the Australian a position on the editing team for his 1969 Vancouver-shot drama That Cold Day In The Park. After this, Altman invited Clifford to Los Angeles, where he eventually worked as a second assistant director on the director’s western classic McCabe & Mrs. Miller, before eventually moving up to the position of editor on Altman’s 1972 curio Images. From there, Clifford went on to edit a series of seminal cult classics: Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now and The Man Who Fell To Earth, Jim Sharman’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Norman Jewison’s F.I.S.T, and Bob Rafelson’s The Postman Always Rings Twice.

After moving into directing via the TV series The New Avengers and Barnaby Jones, Graeme Clifford made his big screen directorial debut with the fierce, utterly compelling 1982 biopic Frances, in which Jessica Lange gives arguably the performance of her career as 1940s and 50s-era Hollywood actress Frances Farmer, who battled paranoid schizophrenia and various forms of abuse throughout her life and career. Though Frances has become somewhat diminished in the years since its release due to questions of veracity levelled against its source material, the film is a truly staggering piece of work, and it announced Clifford as a potential major talent. Jessica Lange was deservedly nominated for an Oscar, and Clifford did amazing work getting her there, while his gifts for pacing, dynamism, and achieving period detail were beautifully showcased. Frances is one of the best, but now most sadly under-celebrated, films of the 1980s.

Graeme Clifford

Graeme Clifford returned to Australia in 1986 for the epic drama Burke & Wills, in which Jack Thompson and Nigel Haves boldly and expertly play, respectively, Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills, the two famous explorers whose expedition from Melbourne in the south to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north of Australia ended with the deaths of nearly all in their party, and their own tragic demise. A beautifully realised, but now largely forgotten, piece of Australian historical cinema, Burke & Wills saw Clifford again elicit fine performances from his cast, and also afforded him the opportunity to craft some truly gorgeous images, with the director obviously learning more than a little from his mentor Nicolas Roeg, a man famed for his painterly depictions of the natural world. Unable to surmount the very fact that the tale of Burke & Wills is, well, a monumental bummer, even Clifford’s fine work couldn’t get the film across the line when it came to box office success, and it ended up as something of a disaster.

After the engaging and entertaining 1989 Christian Slater skateboarding actioner Gleaming The Cube and the effective 1992 Liam Neeson-Andie McDowell thriller Ruby Cairo, Clifford moved almost exclusively into the world of television. The director has done very impressive work here, crafting episodes of series such as David Lynch’s original Twin Peaks, The Guardian and Joan Of Arcadia, along with acclaimed mini-series (The Last Don I & II), and rock-solid telemovies (Past Tense, A Loss Of Innocence, The Last Witness, Redeemer, Crossing The Line and more). Seemingly inactive since 2007’s telemovie Write & Wrong, Graeme Clifford stands as one of Australia’s most supremely unsung cinematic talents.

If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.