Philippe Mora - Biography

Philippe Mora (born 1949) is a French-born Australian film director. Born in 1949 to a German Jewish father and a French Jewish mother, he began making films while still a child.

Career

Mora's first home movie Back Alley, now preserved in the The National Film and Sound Archive, was made in 1964 when he was 15. This was a parody of West Side Story filmed in Flinder's Lane, just behind his mother’s studio at 9 Collins Street. The film features Mora, his brother William and friends, Peter Beilby and Sweeney Reed. Hia next film, Dreams in a Grey Afternoon (1965) was made as a silent movie but was screened with music by artist Asher Bilu. Shot on 8 mm and blown up to 16 mm, the film features stop-motion animation of sculptures by the Russian-Australian sculptor and painter Danila Vassilieff, and includes rare footage of John and Sunday Reed.

His next project, Man in a Film (1966), was a pastiche of Federico Fellini's 8½ and was also influenced by his recent viewing of The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night. Like its predecessor, it was made as a silent movie, shot on 8 mm and blown up to 16 mm, and again screened with music by Asher Bilu. Man in a Film starred Sweeney Reed and premiered at the Tolarno Galleries in early 1967.

Give It Up (1967), shot in Fitzroy Street, Melbourne, again featured Reed, plus Don Watson and Philippe’s younger brother Tiriel. The film symbolised Australian response to the Vietnam War by depicting a man being repeatedly kicked and beaten in a busy street while onlookers do nothing.

In 1967, Mora moved into 'The Pheasantry', a home in King's Road, Chelsea in London, a residence that inspired the name of his production company, Pheasantry Films. Living in or near A virtual "who's who" of London’s underground 'glitterati' lived close to The Pheasantry, including Martin Sharp, Eric Clapton, Germaine Greer, artist Tim Whidborne, 'prominent London identity' David Litvinoff (production adviser on Nicolas Roeg's Performance), writer Anthony Haden-Guest (author of The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco and the Culture of the Night) and another friend from Melbourne, photographer Robert Whitaker, lensman of choice for many leading rock groups on the scene, including The Beatles and Cream.

As "Von Mora", during this time he contributed cartoons to Oz magazine and assisted co-editor Martin Sharp with the landmark "Magic Theatre" edition. He also made his next short film, Passion Play, shot in the Pheasantry ca. 1967-1968 and featuring Jenny Kee as Mary Magdalene, Michael Ramsden as Jesus, and Mora himself as the Devil.

Mora began painting as soon as he arrived in London, and one of his first London exhibitions was held at the gallery of Clytie Jessop, sister of Hermia Boyd (Hermia Lloyd-Jones), wife of noted ceramic artist David Boyd. Jessop was also a well-known actress and director who played the sinister Miss Jessell in Jack Clayton's classic supernatural thriller The Innocents (1961), and later directed the film Emma's War (1988) starring Lee Remick and a young Miranda Otto.

Jessop invited Mora to exhibit at her gallery in the Kings Road where the show was a great success — much to Mora's surprise garnering excellent reviews and generating numerous sales. By his own admission, he was so impoverished at the time that he had been forced to use house paint impregnated with insecticide for his paintings, a necessity he turned to his advantage by telling potential buyers that his paintings were "not only art, but they also kill flies".

More exhibitions at Clytie Jessop's gallery followed, with titles such as "Anti-Social Realism" and "Vomart". Eric Clapton bought one of the paintings from the latter exhibition, which depicted a shot-putter about to throw and simultaneously throwing up in a style reminiscent of the provocative Dada art of Barry Humphries.

Mora also held a show at the Sigi Krauss gallery where Martin Sharp also exhibited, featuring pictures painted in black and white. The show also included a grey male rat which he had bought from Harrods. When the rat turned out to be female and gave birth, he tried unsuccessfully to sell the babies as 'multiples' in a limited edition of eight. The rat show attracted the interest of German avant-garde artist Klaus Stacks, who commissioned Mora to produce an edition of a hundred screen prints of the mother rat. In February 1971, Joseph Beuys and Erwin Heerich invited him to sign a "Call to Action" manifesto demanding the freeing of the German art market.

His next show was an Easter Crucifixion exhibition at the Sigi Krauss gallery featuring a life-size sculpture of a sitting man made entirely of meat and offal, similar to Robert Whitaker's controversial "butcher" cover photos for the Beatles' 1966 Yesterday & Today album. At this exhibition Mora also screened his 8 mm 'film painting' Passion Play back-projected onto a screen framed in gold leaf. Although none of the exhibits were by Mora, Stanley Kubrick's art director purchased some of artist Herman Makkink's work for use in the film A Clockwork Orange, notably the giant white phallus and the chorus line of dancing Jesus sculptures.

Mora's provocative and highly symbolic offal exhibit caused a stir. A brick was thrown through the gallery window, which led to it being featured on the cover of Time Out. Later, as the piece began to petrify, the police were called after Princess Margaret, dining at the restaurant across the street, complained about the stench. Detectives from Scotland Yard descended on the gallery and demanded that the sculpture be removed, but gallery owner Krauss refused. The police claimed it was a health hazard and forced him to move it into the garden, where it gradually rotted away.

Trouble in Molopolis (1970), Mora's his first feature-length film, was financed by the unlikely partnership of Arthur Boyd and Eric Clapton. It was shot in London, with Mora recalling, "every Australian I knew was pulled into the picture". It was filmed in Robert Hughes' apartment and at the Pheasantry. Germaine Greer played a cabaret singer, Jenny Kee was 'Shanghai Lil', Laurence Hope played a gangster, Martin Sharp featured as a mime and Richard Neville as a PR man. Tony Cahill from The Easybeats created the music with Jamie Boyd before the film premiered at the Paris Pullman cinema in Chelsea, as an Oz benefit. Introduced by George Melly, the star of the film, John Ivor Golding, also made a memorable appearance at the premiere, defecating in the front row and then passing out in an alcoholic coma.

In 1975, Mora wrote and directed, Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?, a documentary about the 1930s consisting of a series of film clips and photographs from newsreels, Hollywood films reflecting historical events and those about making movies as well as outtakes, promos, and home movies. This was followed in 1976 by his first theatrical release, Mad Dog Morgan, which he also wrote and directed. The film starred Dennis Hopper, Jack Thompson, David Gulpilil, Bill Hunter and Frank Thring. Mad Dog Morgan was the first Australian movie to get a 40-cinema release in the United States. It went on to receive the John Ford Award in Cannes in 1976 as part of US Bicentennial celebrations while in 1977 Mora was nominated by the Australian Film Institute for 'Best Director' for the film.

After making The Beast Within, his first film in America, Mora's next project was the parodic superhero musical, The Return of Captain Invincible, starring Alan Arkin, Christopher Lee, Kate Fitzpatrick and an all-star Australian cast, with songs by Rocky Horror Show creator Richard O'Brien. The film has long been regarded as a cult classic and recently became a minor hit in the US when it was re-released on DVD, due in part to its now-poignant final scene, in which Captain Invincible flies past the World Trade Center.

These were followed by A Breed Apart with Rutger Hauer and Kathleen Turner, The Howling II & The Howling III, and the political drama Death of a Soldier, starring James Coburn, which was based on the infamous Melbourne wartime Eddie Leonski murder case.

Mora's next film used the plot of the best-selling book Communion, by his old friend from his London days in the late 1960s, artist, author and broadcaster Whitley Strieber. Released in 1989, the film starred Christopher Walken and was based on Strieber's own alleged encounters with aliens.

Film credits as director as well as occasional writer and actor during the 1990s included the horror spoof Pterodactyl Woman From Beverly Hills (1994) with Beverly D'Angelo, Barry Humphries (in three roles), Moon Unit Zappa and Philippe's children Georges and Madeleine; Art Deco Detective (1994); Precious Find (1996) a sci-fi version of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which reunited two actors from Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, Rutger Hauer and the late Brion James. For television, Mora directed Mercenary II: Thick & Thin (1997), and the films Back in Business (1997), Snide and Prejudice (1998), and Burning Down the House (1998).

Mora's most recent film project, When We Were Modern, draws in part on his own life and experience. It examines the tangled lives and loves of the Heide inner circle — Sidney Nolan, Joy Hester, Albert Tucker and John and Sunday Reed. Young Australian actor Clayton Watson (The Matrix) will take the part of Nolan while Sunday Reed will be played by leading Hollywood actress Jennifer Jason Leigh.

In the forties, on the run after deserting from the army, Nolan lived at the Reed's famous house "Heide", and it was here that he painted his first Ned Kelly series. While at Heide, Nolan conducted an open affair with Sunday Reed, but she refused to leave her husband and marry Nolan, so he married John’s Reed’s sister, Cynthia Hansen instead. The marriage eventually broke up, and Cynthia committed suicide in 1976. Her death sparked off a bitter feud between Nolan and author Patrick White, who excoriated Nolan for abandoning his first wife (she and White were close friends) and remarrying Mary Perceval so soon after Cynthia's death.

While researching the film, Mora discovered previously unseen home movies of the Heide circle, including the only films of Joy Hester and the Mirka Café. When We Were Modern is dedicated to Sweeney Reed, who committed suicide in March 1979, aged only 34. He will feature prominently as a character and as a tribute to him, Mora is reportedly planning to screen some of the footage from Back Alley under the closing credits.

See also

• Not Quite Hollywood

External links

• Philippe Mora interview