Charles Chauvel

Charles Chauvel, 1936.

Charles Edward Chauvel (born October 7, 1897 in Warwick / Queensland , † November 11, 1959 in Sydney / New South Wales ) was an Australian screenwriter, film director and producer.

Chauvel grew up as the son of a farmer in South Australia . When his father, the brother of General Sir Henry Chauvel , was employed as a member of the Australian Light Horse in Sinai and Palestine during the First World War , he took care of his father's farm. On his return he studied commercial art in Sydney and attended drama classes. From 1920 he worked as a production assistant, primarily responsible for looking after the horses, for Rex "Snowy" Baker and played small supporting roles in several films. He followed Baker to the United States in 1922, where he made his living writing articles about Australia and doing small jobs in Hollywood.

In 1923 he returned to Australia and made his first film there in 1926, The Moth of Moonbi . In his second film Greenhide, the actress Elsie Sylvaney worked , whom he married in 1927 and who was involved in many of his other films from co-author under the name Elsa Chauvel . He was the manager, director and screenwriter for both films and organized the distribution. His attempt to establish films in America in 1928 also failed, because there was already a change to the sound film.

In Chauvel's first sound film In the Wake of the Bounty , 1933, Errol Flynn had his first major role before he went to Hollywood (the film, a mix of feature and documentary, was not shown in the US, however, because MGM was part of it Time already preparing its own production Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) ). In 1935, Chauvel won the Commonwealth Government's Film Competition with Heritage , a film about Australian history. In Forty Thousand Horsemen , which appeared in late 1940, he addressed the use of the Australian Light Horse in World War I.

Sons of Matthew (1949) was a saga about the pioneering days in southern Queensland and is considered Chauvel's most important film. With Jedda , he made the first Australian color film in 1955. The last thing they did for the British Broadcasting Corporation was a series of thirteen half-hour films called Walkabout . Chauvel died of a heart attack while working on the film Wards of the Outer March based on the book by Kay Glasson Taylor .

Filmography

• 1926: Moth of Moonbi
• 1926: Greenhide
• 1933: In the Wake of the Bounty
• 1935: Heritage
• 1936: Uncivilized
• 1936: Rangle River
• 1937: Screen Test
• 1940: Forty Thousand Horsemen
• 1942: Soldiers Without Uniform
• 1942: Power to Win
• 1943: A Mountain Goes to Sea
• 1943: While there is still time
• 1943: Russia Aflame
• 1944: The Rats of Tobruk
• 1949: Rivals in the Jungle (Sons of Matthew)
• 1955: Jedda
• 1959: Walkabout

Web links

• Charles Chauvel in the Internet Movie Database (English)