--- title: "Picnic at Hanging Rock" year: 1975 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/picnic-at-hanging-rock" fi1m_score: 88 critics_score: 82 critics_reviews: 9 published: "2026-09-17T20:10:13.839467+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T20:10:14.343766+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) Directed by Peter Weir · 1h 47m · MPA PG · Drama, Mystery **Fi1m score: 88** · Critics 82 from 9 reviews *In a sentence:* The rock is doing nothing, and we would still rather leave > Peter Weir makes a school outing frightening without taking away the sunshine. The girls are sometimes too idealised, but the patient cutting and Russell Boyd’s photography make this a mystery we recommend warmly. ## Synopsis On St Valentine’s Day in 1900, a party of schoolgirls sets out for a picnic at Hanging Rock. Among the pupils are Miranda St. Clare (Anne-Louise Lambert), Irma Leopold (Karen Robson) and Marion Quade (Jane Vallis). Their all-girls school prizes proper behaviour, but the outing takes them into the Australian landscape, away from classroom routines. For the girls, the picnic offers time outside the restrictions of school life. When members of the party disappear at the rock, a day in the open air becomes a mystery for the people left behind. ## Review *Picnic at Hanging Rock* is a deeply unsettling mystery, worth the patience it asks of us. Peter Weir takes a school outing on St Valentine’s Day in 1900 and makes the daylight feel unsafe. The disappearance matters, but the picnic is troubling before we have much reason to fear for anyone. The film makes the girls’ escape from school restrictions feel precarious, and its unease survives the immediate question of what has happened to them. Cliff Green’s screenplay, adapted from Joan Lindsay’s novel, gives the school’s insistence on propriety a weight of its own. Rachel Roberts plays Mrs. Appleyard with a severity that makes such authority credible, even when its confidence seems absurd. Her seriousness is frightening because she seems to believe that keeping order ought to be enough to keep trouble away. The picnic places the girls somewhere that cannot be made safe by prescribing the correct behaviour. Russell Boyd’s cinematography is central to the discomfort. The sunlight does not let us inspect the landscape and put our fears to rest; it makes the place feel stranger, as though looking harder might be a mistake. Against the rock, the schoolgirls seem exposed in a way that the school’s manners cannot address. We were frightened by the rock in broad daylight, because Boyd makes its physical presence so much more forceful than the people beside it. Max Lemon’s editing allows that uncertainty to settle instead of hurrying us towards the next piece of information. The pace can feel languid, but it gives us time to start distrusting the landscape, which justifies spending so long looking at it. Bruce Smeaton’s music sustains the unease beneath that leisurely pace, rather than supplying an instruction to jump. The effect is hypnotic, though anyone unmoved by the images may reasonably find the extended attention to them rather slow. The reservation is the treatment of the girls themselves. Anne-Louise Lambert gives Miranda St. Clare a calm that suits the film’s fascination with her, but the camera’s attention sometimes makes her seem too perfect. We wanted a little more of the irritation and awkwardness that might interrupt all that admiration. A film so alert to the restrictions placed on young women can still spend too long looking at them as though their chief duty were to be beautiful. Many mysteries encourage us to feel clever for noticing what other people miss. This one makes sustained attention uncomfortable: studying the rock does little to make it seem familiar or safe. The tension between Victorian manners and the Australian landscape gives that discomfort a social cause, without requiring us to translate every image into a statement about repression. Peter Weir trusts that an audience can be interested in the girls’ desires and frightened for them at the same time. Watch it when there is time to settle into its pace, rather than with one eye on the clock. The 107 minutes ask for attention, particularly when there seems to be little happening. We would leave the conversation until afterwards. *Fi1m score 88, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say The reviews are unanimously positive, with praise clustering around Peter Weir’s command of atmosphere and the unsettling Australian landscape. Most critics value the film’s suggestiveness, finding dread and repressed desire in its schoolgirl mystery rather than treating it as a puzzle to be solved. Empire singles out Russell Boyd’s cinematography, while the broader consensus admires the way the sunlit setting becomes strange and threatening. Sexual repression and Victorian propriety are recurring points of interest. The differences are chiefly in enthusiasm and interpretation, rather than explicit objections. Scores range from 70 to 90, but even the more measured assessments praise the poetic mood and nature’s disturbing presence. The Guardian stresses imperial anxiety and sexual hysteria; Eye for Film finds adolescent tensions especially rewarding, while acknowledging the mystery’s frustrating quality. There is no clear dissenting review, nor a shared complaint about performance, pacing or construction. ### Reviews we read (9) - **The AV Club**, Keith Phipps (90/100, inferred): The film is a beautifully shot, haunted, and haunting movie and a classic example of the power of suggestiveness, elusiveness, and understatement. It helped initiate the first wave of interest in Australian moviemaking and is a peerless mystery in the truest sense of the word. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/picnic-at-hanging-rock-1798196203) - **The Guardian** (90/100, inferred): Peter Weir’s 1975 film is a classic of the Australian new wave cinema, a supernatural parable of imperial anxiety and sexual hysteria that remains dazzling on its 50th anniversary re-release. The critic singles out its sun-stricken hallucinatory strangeness and the way it affects the manner of a true-crime cold case around an unknowable enigma at the rock. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/feb/20/picnic-at-hanging-rock-review-peter-weir) - **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (3.5/4): Weir's film creates a haunting mystery around the unexplained disappearance of schoolgirls and a teacher on a picnic, evoking buried terror and repressed sexuality in a lush Australian landscape. Ebert praises its deliberate inconclusiveness and hypnotic, enigmatic quality over any tidy resolution. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/picnic-at-hanging-rock-1980) - **Empire**, Ian Nathan (85/100, inferred): The critic calls it a haunting and compelling oddity from Peter Weir, part mystery, part horror, and an impressionist poem to lost innocence. The sumptuous and captivating cinematography by Russell Boyd is singled out for praise, along with the film's emphasis on nature's alien quality and its refusal to provide straightforward answers. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/picnic-hanging-rock-review/) - **Los Angeles Times**, Kevin Thomas (85/100, inferred): Weir's director's cut revival is exquisite and seductive, showcasing masterful mood and suggestiveness with the rock as a brooding presence and the story's erotic symbolism. Thomas calls it a gorgeous-looking, superbly wrought enigma that helped revive Australian cinema. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-jun-25-ca-63262-story.html) - **The New York Times**, J. Hoberman (80/100, inferred): The restored 1975 film is a national treasure epitomizing the 'outback uncanny,' with its tale of girls and a teacher vanishing from a prehistoric rock formation amid Victorian propriety. Hoberman highlights its quasi-supernatural atmosphere and status as Australia's greatest movie. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/29/movies/picnic-at-hanging-rock-restoration.html) - **Sight and Sound**, James Bell (70/100, inferred): The film became a breakthrough for Australian cinema with its poetic mood and sumptuous cinematography. It revolves around the unexplained disappearance of schoolgirls at the rock, evoking ancestral ghosts and the tension between Victorian attitudes and the rugged landscape. [Read](http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/review/5596) - **Slant Magazine**, Chris Cabin (70/100, inferred): Desire as persistent and intense as the sunshine on a bright summer day teases out madness in Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock. The power of nature is quiet but all-consuming in this unclassifiable work, which Criterion gives an astonishing A/V transfer. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/picnic-at-hanging-rock/) - **Eye for Film**, Jennie Kermode (85/100, inferred): The critic praises Weir's graceful adaptation for capturing the book's mysterious and frustrating spirit along with its magical atmosphere rooted in aboriginal Dreamtime traditions. They single out the exploration of adolescent tensions, sensuality, and repression at the all-girls school as a key strength. [Read](https://eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/picnic-at-hanging-rock-film-review-by-jennie-kermode) ## Details - **Director:** Peter Weir - **Director:** Peter Weir - **Screenplay:** Cliff Green - **Novel:** Joan Lindsay - **Cinematography:** Russell Boyd - **Editor:** Max Lemon - **Music:** Bruce Smeaton - **Producer:** Jim McElroy, Hal McElroy - **Cast:** Rachel Roberts as Mrs. Appleyard; Vivean Gray as Miss Greta McCraw; Helen Morse as Mlle. Dianne de Poitiers; Kirsty Child as Miss Dora Lumley; Tony Llewellyn-Jones as Tom; Jacki Weaver as Minnie; Anne-Louise Lambert as Miranda St. Clare; Karen Robson as Irma Leopold - **Runtime:** 1h 47m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG - **Release (the US):** 2 September 1975 - **Genres:** Drama, Mystery - **Budget:** $460,000 - **Box office:** $5 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOA1UY_ND2M ## Where to watch in the US - HBO Max: streaming, leaving 2026-09-30 - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd, leaving 2026-10-01 - Hulu: add-on, hd *Checked 2026-09-16.* Also available in: AU, DK, ES, FI, IT, NO, PL, SE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - AACTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role 1976: AACTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (nominated) - AACTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role 1976: AACTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (nominated) - AACTA Award for Best Cinematography 1976: AACTA Award for Best Cinematography (nominated) - AACTA Award for Best Direction 1976: AACTA Award for Best Direction (nominated) - AACTA Award for Best Film 1976: AACTA Award for Best Film (nominated) - Australian Film Institute Award for Best Screenplay 1976: Australian Film Institute Award for Best Screenplay (nominated) ## If you liked this - *The Last Wave* (1977): Rain and foreboding trouble another attempt to keep ordinary life under control. - *The Spirit of the Beehive* (1973), Fi1m 87: Childhood curiosity makes a quiet rural landscape feel strange and potentially dangerous. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-spirit-of-the-beehive.md) - *The Innocents* (1961): Adult certainty proves a poor defence against the fears gathering around two children. - *The Virgin Suicides* (1999), Fi1m 83: Adolescent girls endure adult scrutiny, while admiration threatens to obscure their actual lives. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-virgin-suicides.md) - *The White Ribbon* (2009), Fi1m 86: A rural community’s rigid manners give unexplained cruelty plenty of room to grow. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-white-ribbon.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. 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