i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

First feature film by Cecil Holmes, a New Zealander who came to Australia just before our TV started. Big in energy and ambition, Holmes threw a lot into this picture (his word) with a dedicated cast and crew -- they were all tired of English and US film travesties being made in this country. Black and white visual poetry by Ross Wood, dean of Australian cinematography at that period -- unforgettable. There's a good still in Pike and Cooper's book Australian Film 1900-1977, published by Oxford UP. Probably no 35mm prints remain anywhere in full length of 69 minutes (yes, it was low budget, but it was quality). Classically forceful sequence in a bar where the piano-man can overhear the secret -- now that was imaginative sound! Robert Allan, the sound man, was also a New Zealander. In the language of the film's 50 years ago, "A Good Try".