Picnic at Hanging Rock

"On St. Valentine's Day in 1900 a party of schoolgirls set out to picnic at Hanging Rock…Some were never to return."

1975 1h 47m EN

👍

7.2

SOLID

🔥

93%

CERTIFIED FRESH

💯

METACRITIC

⭐

7.4

IMDB

★7.2TMDB · 920🍅93%Rotten Tomatoes●81Metacritic★7.4IMDB · 43,997

DramaMystery

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

In the early 1900s, Miranda attends a girls boarding school in Australia. One Valentine's Day, the school's typically strict headmistress treats the girls to a picnic field trip to an unusual but scenic volcanic formation called Hanging Rock. Despite rules against it, Miranda and several other girls venture off. It's not until the end of the day that the faculty realizes the girls and one of the teachers have disappeared mysteriously.

“On St. Valentine's Day in 1900 a party of schoolgirls set out to picnic at Hanging Rock…Some were never to return.”

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Cast

Rachel Roberts
Mrs. Appleyard
Vivean Gray
Miss Greta McCraw
Helen Morse
Mlle. Dianne de Poitiers
Kirsty Child
Miss Dora Lumley
Tony Llewellyn-Jones
Tom
Jacki Weaver
Minnie
Anne-Louise Lambert
Miranda St. Clare
Karen Robson
Irma Leopold

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Peter Weir
Writers: Cliff Green
Languages: English, French
Countries: Australia

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Shot for just $0.5M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Grossed $5M — a 11.1× return. The kind of profit studios chase for a decade.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

ERA

Did you know

51 years old — a genuine piece of film history.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

Dialogue crosses 2 languages: English, French.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Peter Weir, shot by Russell Boyd. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Bruce Smeaton. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Max Lemon shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Rachel Roberts and Vivean Gray and Helen Morse carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Peter Weir directs. Russell Boyd behind the camera. Bruce Smeaton scores. Max Lemon cuts. Made its budget back several times over at the box office. Produced in Australia. Dialogue in English, French.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Shot for just $0.5M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.
2Grossed $5M — a 11.1× return. The kind of profit studios chase for a decade.
351 years old — a genuine piece of film history.
4Dialogue crosses 2 languages: English, French.
5Directed by Peter Weir, shot by Russell Boyd. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
6Original score by Bruce Smeaton. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
7Editor Max Lemon shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
8Rachel Roberts and Vivean Gray and Helen Morse carry the top of the cast.
9Marketing tagline: "On St. Valentine's Day in 1900 a party of schoolgirls set out to picnic at Hanging Rock…Some were never to return.".
10IMDB entry: tt0073540 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
11Classified under 11 themes, including "australia", "based on novel or book", "orphanage", "girls' boarding school".
12Released under 36 different titles around the world.

The technical file

Cinematography: Russell Boyd
Original score: Bruce Smeaton
Editing: Max Lemon
Makeup / hair: Elizabeth Mitchie
Runtime: 107 min · 1h 47m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Budget: $460,000
Box office: $5,125,000
Return: 1114% of budget
Original language: EN
Certification (US): PG
IMDB: Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
Rotten Tomatoes: 93% 🍅 Fresh
Metacritic: 81/100
IMDB rating: 7.4/10 · 43,997 votes
MPAA: PG

Awards

Won 1 BAFTA Award4 wins & 11 nominations total

Also by

Peter Weir

Stills · wallpapers

Selected frames

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Wallpaper

Trailers & featurettes

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Community reviews

What people are saying

Wuchak2021-03-08
★ 7/10
Several females suddenly go missing in southeast Australia in 1900 When the students & staff of a girl’s school outside Melbourne take an outing to Hanging Rock on Valentine’s Day in 1900, three girls and a teacher mysteriously go missing. What happened to them? Directed by Peter Weir and based on the 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay, “Picnic at Hanging Rock” (1975) is an artsy psychological mystery that seems timeless. The style is akin to movies like “Days of Heaven” (1978), “The Secret Garden” (1993) and “The Virgin Suicides” (1999). If you like those movies you’ll appreciate this one. While not as compelling as Weir’s future “Dead Poets Society” (1989), there are some obvious parallels. Both movies deal with prep schools that represent the curious constraints of civilization; you play the game to survive and the only way to escape is through some kind of exile. The first act is artistic, but rather dull with an increasing sense of foreboding. Things pick up during the haunting outing at Hanging Rock. Once the females go missing the movie becomes compelling because the viewer WANTS to know what happened. The fun of the movie is to speculate on the clues and come to a probable conclusion, as well as look for symbolic meaning. I should add that I own the “The Secret of Hanging Rock,” published in 1987, which contains Lindsay’s supposedly missing 18th chapter. I strongly believe this was a scam by the publisher to sell more books after the author’s death due to the increasing interest in the story via the movie’s international success. There is zero factual evidence of this apocryphal 'last chapter' containing the 'explanation' to the original book. Lindsay had repeatedly stated that she did NOT write any solution and purposefully left the story a mystery, fiercely advocating the open-endedness of her tale. It doesn’t help that this curiously brief ‘last chapter’ doesn’t fit the style & content of the original novel; it’s awkwardly blunt with its peculiar ‘explanation.’ Still, it is ONE of the possible answers and certainly adds to the interesting mystery. The film runs 1 hour, 47 minutes, with another version running about 8 minutes longer. It was shot at Hanging Rock in the state of Victoria, about a 50-minute drive northwest of Melbourne in southeast Australia; the Appleyard College sequences were shot at Martindale Hall near Mintaro in South Australia, about a 7-hour drive northwest of Hanging Rock. Other scenes were shot in the studio at Adelaide, which is about an hour drive south of Martindale Hall. GRADE: B

Production companies