Finn Morse
When considering the horizon of Australian movies, it’s difficult to understate armored car action movies. Most Australian films of the 1970s held a calm reputation to them, from the quaint and quiet Picnic at Hanging Rock to the romantic My Brilliant Career. However, these hardly hold a candle in international influence when compared to the mighty Mad Max franchise. Mad Max is a series globally well received, with notable escalation in scope from installment to installment. The Mad Max franchise prides itself on its immersion to the Australian wilderness, and its cavalcade of kick-ass cars. Unbeknownst to the general public, the armored car subgenre did not actually stem from Mad Max or its subsidiaries. Instead, it was The Cars That Ate Paris. Made for a budget of only $250,000, the movie made strides in its small location, tight runtime, and limited budget.
The directorial debut from Peter Weir—known for later works like The Truman Show and Dead Poets Society—Paris is a project rooted in innovating a small budget to fit massive goals. Weir, an oftentimes gentle minded and sentimental director in his later years, was inspired to create this story in his college days. After several student projects and being a PA on Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy, Weir earned enough notoriety to get up and make his first movie. Paris seeks to ignite a sense of identity in Australian filmmakers, who, up until now, captured beauty and majesty with wistful music. Here, there is chaos, absurdity, and all around bewilderment. A total shock to the system, and a jump start to the Australian New Wave.
While it doesn’t lack them, The Cars That Ate Paris was not a success for a rich story or mature performances. It was for those Paris-eating cars, of course. Armored vehicles coated the marketing, the title, the reputation of this thing. The Cannes Film Festival showcased The Cars That Ate Paris, the very first Australian movie to ever premiered at the event. That was huge. It encouraged the whole of Australia to start making some crazy movies. Movies that would catch audiences’ eyes for their content and not for their star power.
These cars operate in service to a much more elaborate and kooky narrative. The Cars That Ate Paris is not an action-driven stunt machine. It is about a rural cult’s confused search for community and identity in the small, Australian town of Paris. The film follows one of the town’s young male victims attempting to assimilate into the new status quo, quietly stalked by a gang of incorrigible youths driving creature-esque scrap-armored cars.
Arthur—the aforementioned male victim, played by Terry Cammileri—begins the movie as a broken man, unable to drive due to a car accident that cost him his license and the life of a pedestrian. He blames himself for the loss of his older brother, who was behind the wheel the night of his car accident, landing him in Paris. In every action he takes, Arthur looks for a way to forgive himself, and to move on from his mistakes. He tries to step behind the wheel of a car and leave town, only to give in to his fear of driving, the thing that effectively took his life away. While he’s given a job and a place in the town of Paris, he’ll never be able to forgive himself and live an authentic life. Always haunted by the ghosts of his past, and his fear of the open road.
The fictional town of Paris was made to self-insert the whole of Australian small town life into one location. It was a warning to audiences, almost saying “this could happen to you.” The people of Paris make their income off of causing car accidents like the one that took the life of Arthur’s brother. They institutionalize the victims of the crashes, and strip the cars to sell for parts. Any children in the crashes are adopted and raised in the town, putting Arthur in a very strange case. The town’s mayor, named “The Mayor,” tries to adopt Arthur into the fold by offering him a job and a home, manipulating him with grisly photos of car accidents and detailing the death of his brother, all to enforce Arthur’s fear of driving a car. Arthur has no choice but to accept his place in the community.
Vehicle parts from the crashes are collected by the town in a ritual fashion. Each vehicle torn apart feels like a character. The third car crash lets the audience watch as the vehicle is disassembled by a whole group of these rural townsfolk, all with a sick sense of normalcy to robbing the worth of the people they engineered to die. The middle-aged and even the elderly all band together in this twisted “community building” exercise, almost like they were looking forward to it. It’s just a way to pass the time, a way to connect as a collective. The practice is so normal that the town’s skyline contains a scrap yard of old car bodies, left behind to blend into the environment and for the children to play on.
The cinematography is a tool that traps the viewer in the town right alongside Arthur, equal parts showing the beauty of the Australian outback (Arthur finding acceptance and love from a community) and the claustrophobia setting in after due time. One particular wide angle shot (above) shows Arthur walking under some Eucalyptus trees bordering town. Looking closer, this supposed freedom is burdened by a barrier; a chainlink fence between Arthur and the camera provides an illusion of imprisonment. We hear the roar of an engine behind Arthur, seeing the mayor’s red car pulling up behind him. We realize it wasn’t an illusion, but a wordless understanding.
The adolescent victims of the crashes, meanwhile, are left in a search for identity. Raised by the Parisians, but they aren’t Parisians themselves. The devoid youths will eventually grow out of their parents’ shadows, making way for sheer and utter chaos. The monstrous cars are born out of the indomitable human quest for expression and purpose. They’re creatures that the town effectively made. The cars are these incorrigible youths, turned into sharks too big for their small pond.
The town Paris is even more so in a confusion of identity. The musical score is a perfect indicator of how diametrically muddled the personality of the town is. Composer Bruce Smeaton was brought on for his oftentimes countercultural musical style. His work is able to fit into linear stories, such as Picnic at Hanging Rock, his second collaboration with Weir. But in Paris, Smeaton was selected to mimic other sounds.
Composition after composition is a complete misunderstanding of the music it attempts to imitate. During scenes of cars being scrapped, suspenseful synths sound as a car is burned alive. Its headlights looking like it’s crying. When rebellious teenagers dressed as cowboy menace, music shakily imitates music from Once Upon A Time in the West. Even more ill-fitting music plays as one of the teenagers is is arrested by the police after shooting a driver. The paddy wagon ride plays wistful tender strings.
In align with the conceit of the film, being a medley of art and action, there are moments of sheer enjoyment brought to life in the cinematography. Right before the great climactic demolition of Paris, the rebel rousers drive their monstrous cars one by one out of artificial darkness, surrounding a townsman. This one unbroken shot (below) provides the exciting thrill of what would become the stunts of Mad Max and the scale of The Road Warrior. The groundwork was right here, brought to life in the cinematography.
The Paris Victory Hall and its ensuing party paints blaring subtext. Older townsfolk are dress like cowboys, Chinese people, and wear masks, even one in blackface. The mayor dresses up like Abraham Lincoln, a leader he could never hope to be. The perfect storm of identity failure any town in the middle of nowhere might have, given enough time. Even the town’s name, “Paris,” is an imitation of something bigger and better that came before it.
In its conclusory fifteen minutes, The Cars That Ate Paris doesn’t waste the premise or rob its audience. It pulls out all of the stops to deliver the action thrill that shook a generation. The rebellious youths and their monstrous cars destroy the town that made them. The stunt work here is fantastic for having such a low budget. Cars and debris flying every which way during the teenagers’ destruction of main street. Several houses are destroyed, and Parisians killed. An all-out riot justifies the wait, and ties every loose thread together in conclusion.
The Cars That Ate Paris went on to become the fire under Australia’s filmmakers. It spawned the aforementioned action car craze, which also opened up Australia’s movies to the world. The film additionally increased the demand for authentic and high concept stories that would shortly follow. Without The Cars That Ate Paris, the world wouldn’t have movies like Dead Poets Society or Mad Max: Fury Road.
It’s a shame that the great Peter Weir never ended up making anything like The Cars That Ate Paris ever again. The closest directed work after it would be Fearless or The Truman Show, two other high-concept stories that still ended up feeling knowable. Paris continues to be the oddest and somehow most captivating directorial debut to come out of Australian filmmaking, for its bold swings, and for its strange sense of optimism for a chaotic outback world. Sometimes the greatest things start in the weirdest places.
