Time was we were seeing quite a bit of New Zealand production and things like John Reid's Middle Aged Spread, Geof Murphey's Goodby Pork Pie and Murray Ball's Footrot Flats were lively and unexpected - better than the films being made in Australia. Well those days are gone but the odd New Zealand film still makes it’s way onto TV here - usually in the middle of the night, like 2019’s Ablaze directed by Joshua Frizzell and crewed by people whose background like his was in series TV.
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| Ablaze - Bruce Hopkins, David Van Horn. |
This one is a scaled down disaster movie dealing with a Xmas 1947 fire which engulfed Ballantyne’s department store in Christchurch. It gets some attention immediately for being in black and white ‘scope and attempting accurate period.
However it looks as if the makers have overreached themselves in trying for a big store movie. What they put on screen is less convincing than Ladies in Black or even the Marx Brothers and Norman Wisdom, let alone the three exceptional French films of Zola’s “Au bonheur des dames” - Julien Duvivier’s late silent, André Cayatte’s 1943 turn and Pot Bouille by Duvivier again in 1957.
The New Zealanders seem to be working too hard, foregrounding a snotty floor walker who snubs a visitor in shirt sleeves and isn’t above making off with stock, putting moves on the shop girls and having a quiet smoke in the store room. By contrast dress maker Hannah Marshall is concealing her pregnancy and is relieved when her severe supervisor re-assures her that she’ll be re-hired after her confinement. The girls are shown to be exploited (“I’ve never been to the races. I can’t afford it”) The dressmakers and milliners are at panic stations because they have to outfit current Miss New Zealand Mary Wootton and the auditors are in, getting all owner Mark Mitchinson’s attention.
Despite considerable effort, we never have the feel that all this is happening in a sprawling three story fire trap. The elevator with it’s light up indicator is clearly the art director’s show piece but it comes as a surprise a couple of reels in to find that the store has a spacious Tea Room.
However at the point where I was losing interest, we get the fire disaster which does play effectively in character terms, with the cast gradually realising the situation and reacting differently to to the circumstances they find themselves in as the ingrained store discipline restrains them.
Parallel with this we get the fire service in shiny brass helmets struggling after an inadequate preparation. The warden has to use the street pay kiosk to phone the fire in and they discover
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| Alison Bruce, Janine Burchett, Jared Turner, Serena Cotton, Mark Mitchinson, Manon Blackman, Nick Davies, and Brittany Clark. |
with alarm that the doors are being locked to prevent pilfering while the fireys are restrained because they need the owner’s permission to enter private property.
The actual scenes of rising smoke and corridors blocked by flames, while the characters we have been introduced to make usually bad decisions, do hold attention not the least because this is not a Towering Inferno but a small retail business menaced on a scale beyond their anticipation.
Even here the cut price film making limits efforts. Through the window we see the dress maker escaping on the roof opposite without watching the stunt jump which we are told landed her there. Shots of figures on the smoke filled stairs don’t prepare us for the body count which is more effectively conveyed in a final title listing the names of victims.
The use of actuality of the building blazing, its flag still flapping in the wind while the fire crews pour water into the flames, and the subsequent memorial carry the real charge, along with the news that the Ballantyne’s fire led to major changes in regulations and, since they were introduced, there hasn’t been a comparable disaster.
Ablaze - Hannah Marshall, Manon Blackman and Ella Hope-Higginson
Barrie Pattison 2022
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