Heart of the Stag

Heart of the Stag is the best new Zealand movie since Smash Palace. It is certain to add to our understanding of a delicate area of sexuality.

Heart of the Stag, New Zealand, 1984

Director: Michael Firth
Production co: Southern Light Pictures
Producers: Don Reynolds, Michael Firth
Screenplay: Neil Illingworth, From a story by Michael Firth
Additional writing: Bruno Lawrence, Michael Firth, Martyn Sanderson
Director of photography: James Bartle
Camera: John Toon
Editor: Michael Horton
Music: Leonard Rosenman

With: Bruno Lawrence (Daley), Mary Regan (Cathy Jackson), Terence Cooper (Jackson), Anne Flannery (Mrs Jackson), Michael Wilson (Farmhand), Susanne Cowie (young Cathy)

35mm, 91 minutes, M—Contains Sex Scenes

On a remote country sheep station a new hired hand slowly uncovers a relationship that no-one could admit to. Like the great stag that he loves to hunt, Jackson rules his farm and family with fierce possessiveness – but his love for his own daughter hast gone too far. Cathy, the daughter, has for years accepted her fathers brutish love. Daley arrives and shows her a tenderness she had only dreamt of. That night he first knocked on the Jackson family door Daley had no idea that what lay beyond would at first attract, and then gradually sicken him as he came to realize their dreadful secret.

“Heart of the Stag is the best new Zealand movie since Smash Palace. It is certain to add to our understanding of a delicate area of sexuality.” — John Parker, Metro, January 1985

“The best New Zealand films (Smash Palace, Bad Blood) all seem to deal with violent family relationships in remote parts of the country. Heart of the Stag is no exception, and despite some weaknesses in Neil Illingworth’s screenplay, emerges as a quality drama of considerable intensity… the fact that Heart of the Stag works as well as it does is almost entirely due to the performances of its two leads. Bruno Lawrence is very strong as the rough-at-the-edges but basically tender loner who finds himself drawn to the vulnerable, manifestly unhappy Cathy, who’s beautifully played by Mary Regan.” — David Stratton, Variety, 15 May 1984

“The dramatic, hilly back country of New Zealand is the setting for an electrifyingly good, harrowing film, Heart of the Stag. Its theme is power and domination, and the method its rugged sheep farmer/father has used to establish that power over his striking, late-teen-age daughter is incest. Director Michael Firth, co-producer and author of the film’s original story, and his screenwriter, Neil Illingworth, shrink not at all from the physical realities of their story. Before the film is five minutes old, we witness a brutal scene of love-making and, as we sort out the pair, the young girl’s anguished passivity and the age of the beefy, suntanned man naked on top of her makes us uneasy in the extreme. The worst is true. The family’s other member, Anne Flannery as the wife and mother, is wheelchair-bound and mute from a stroke, but absolutely aware of her husband’s almost nightly activities, and desperate for her daughter. Into this maelstrom comes a forthrightly physical, self-reliant, self-styled ‘gypsy’ (Bruno Lawrence, so good as Smash Palace’s anguished father), a not-unintelligent man with an engagingly clownish side to him... he ends up working for Cooper... Not unsurprisingly, he becomes curious about this impulsive, skittish, beautiful young woman, even though one of the other regular hands dourly warns him off. The inevitable triangle unfolds with power, with surprise, with great lyricism and with superb performances by all four principals, but a simply magnificent one by the flame-haired Regan, a great find. She draws a portrait of a deeply traumatized young woman with delicate intensity, every branching emotion as defined as the veins of a leaf held in the sun. She is repulsed, attracted, terrified, gentle, fierce, wild and tender by turns... Lawrence, goofy and gallant by turns, and unexpectedly ingenious at the film’s end, is again splendid. These actors may be better than their script, with its underlined Great Statements, but director Michael Firth seems to have guided the entire cast deftly past whatever snags the screenplay occasionally presents. Special notice should be made of the cinematography by James Bartle, who seems to have a special affinity for these astonishing landscapes, and of Leonard Rosenman’s especially fine and fitting music. Heart of the Stag is explicit and adult, and those whom this heavily charged theme might disturb are certainly hereby warned. Yet in a way, its New Zealand directness is cleansing: Sometimes it is less painful to have an image of the ‘unthinkable’ than to embroider it in our minds.” — Sheila Benson, Los Angeles Times

“In Heart of the Stag, we have a New Zealand film which succeeds in three main areas where others have failed. The script, direction and editing have often let the local films down. But Michael Firth’s work displays a cohesion and unity in these areas which, when combined with the high calibre production skills of our film industry, give us a movie of rare quality... Incest is a delicate subject for a film whcih must also aim for commercial success. It is an especially hot topic for a man to explore, but Firth has wisely not let the theme dominate his approach in making the film. It treats its subjects in a realistic way. It doesn’t glorify the theme above the film’s storyline in an attempt to make a grand social statement (which must have been the temptation) and, in doing so, lets the grim reality of incest tell the story itself... The film has the benefit of fine actors to interpret the script. In his 14th film role Bruno Lawrence, with characteristic drawling charm, creates a strong but sensitive character. Lawrence seems to be able to refelct the New Zealand condition with his face. Mary Regan impresses in her first film... Michael Firth comes across as a filmmaker of considerable talent and maturity, developed from his earlier effort, the documentary-styled Off the Edge (1977). He has managed to allay fears that the subject of incest could not be broached wihtout compromise.” — Jonathan Dowling, New Zealand Herald, 2/2/1985

“Incest is a touchy subject, and Heart of the Stag, a new movie from New Zealand, approaches the topic with the utmost seriousness and no trace of exploitation. The treatment is consistently engrossing and the acting is on a high level. Obviously there are some important movie stirrings in New Zealand. Recall Smash Palace, the fine previous film that made its mark. Bruno Lawrence, so good in Smash Palace as the rejected husband, returns to portray a drifter who is hired to assist on a sheep ranch. Lawrence is not your every day, handsome leading man. He’s balding, rough hewn, but extremely interesting and a fine, sensitive actor. The newcomer discovers a seething situation on the verge of exploding. The owner, played with virility and cruelty by Terence Cooper, has been having sex with his daughter, now grown and attractive since her childhood. We see them in bed before we learn of their being related. The director, Michael Firth, neatly entwines sexual scenes of past and present to give us the background. This is no story of strange love one is asked to understand. The father is clearly a brute, the daughter a powerless victim. The man’s wife, having had a stroke, is confined to a wheelchair and cannot speak. But clearly would like to end the abuse if only she could gain access to one of her husband’s hunting rifles. (He has a passion for hunting stags). Mary Regan is touching as Cathy, the daughter, who can’t bring herself to confide in the stranger. His mere presence is unsettling in that it poses an alternative to her degrading life. Regan powerfully conveys the pain and the repressed anger boiling within her. Firth, working from Neil Illingworth’s screenplay, establishes a firm sense of place through the depiction of the ranch and the surrounding terrain. James Bartle’s cinematography gives the film a physical beauty that contrasts with the sordidness inside the house. Heart of the Stag, which arrived with no fanfare, is a jolting surprise, an absorbing movie on a subject that needs attention.” — William Wolf, Barnett News Service, 1984

Screenings: Heart of the Stag screened on 27 July 2005 in a season honouring the work of actor Bruno Lawrence.