AllMovie

Filmmaker Charles Chauvel and his wife Elsa were most renowned for their contributions to the Australian National Cinema, which combined bush legends from the 1890s and special photographic techniques to enhance the natural grandeur of the outback to create a distinctive style of filmmaking. His first feature film, Moth of Moonbi was completed in 1926. In that year, he also made Greenhide, which starred Elsie Wilcox, his future wife (Elsa Chauvel) and co-filmmaker in all of his subsequent work. The Australian film industry was almost destroyed during World War II, but the Chauvels were among the few to keep making narrative films after the war, saving the industry from extinction until the 1970s when the Australian National Cinema was born. Their earlier works formed the basic foundations for the nationalist art form.