Brides of Christ (1991)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Introduction-ABC video
Rating
Year Of Production	1991
Running Time	327:12 (Case: 330)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (27:22) Dual Disc Set	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Ken Cameron
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Brenda Fricker Sandy Gore Josephine Byrnes Lisa Hensley Naomi Watts Kim Wilson
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$49.95	Music	None Given

    Although a telemovie, you would easily be fooled into thinking this is a feature movie given the standard of acting, script writing and direction. And if it weren’t for the slightly dodgy transfer (which I will discuss in more detail shortly), you would also be fooled into believing that this series is a lot more recent than it actually is.

    When Brides of Christ went to air on the ABC in 1991, I can remember it creating quite a stir. The plot of the series basically follows the lives of six central characters – both nuns and students – at a Catholic boarding school in Sydney during the reformation of the church brought about by Vatican II in the 1960s. An overarching plot is broken down into six smaller stories, the way in which Changi, the recent ABC series about Australian WWII POW’s in Singapore, was done. However, Brides of Christ actually surpasses that admittedly excellent series in its production values and scripting.

    Here is a short summary of the episodes:

Disc 1

    1. "Diane" (54:51) -- Young university graduate Diane (Josephine Byrnes) gives up her life and the opportunity of a family to join the Catholic Church as a Sister at a Catholic girls’ school. However, with her education and ego she brings some very reformist ideas that clash with the traditional ways.

    2. "Frances" (54:58) -- When one of the students at the girls’ school, Frances (a young Naomi Watts), realises her mother is about to be divorced and consequently excommunicated from the Church, she is thrown into turmoil about what this means regarding her family and her future with Catholicism.

    3. "Ambrose" (55:01) -- The Vatican has issued a call for reformation of the Church in order to keep up with changing social values. This includes the first ever male teacher at the school, and personal challenges for Mother Ambrose (Sandy Gore) as those who believe in the more traditional ways find it increasingly harder to cope with the changes.

Disc 2

    4. "Rosemary" (54:18) -- As Rosemary (Kym Wilson) becomes aware of her sexuality, she finds herself caught between lust and her family’s strict Catholic upbringing. Confused and angry, she responds by rebelling in acts of increasing self-destruction.

    5. "Paul" (55:01) -- Sister Paul (Lisa Hensley) decides she wants to leave the Church and marry her long time love who has recently been forced out of the clergy for his radical views on reform. However, she has become so institutionalised she struggles to cope on the outside.

    6. "Catherine" (53:31) -- Diane, now Sister Catherine, struggles to cope with the refusal of the Vatican to reform the Church’s view on birth control. As the time comes when the students she knows the best will be graduating and entering the real world, Sister Catherine questions whether it is time for her, too, to go with them.

    I am not Catholic, and could probably best be described as agnostic – I like to keep my options open. However, I have studied theology and religion and find it fascinating on a sociological and psychological level, even if I detest repression and intentional ignorance as a form of socio-political control. I saw a lot in this series that enticed me intellectually. However, regardless of whether you are Catholic or have any knowledge of religion, I don’t think any of those things are necessary to enjoy this series. It is, without a doubt, one of the finest productions the ABC has ever put together. At its core, this series is pure period drama – personal choices and personal conflicts creating moral quandaries, all painted across the sweeping background of change in 1960s Australia. Moreover, it has, for the most part, fantastic scripting and excellent performances. With the young Naomi Watts as a definite stand-out, watching this you can tell that there was no question as to whether she would go on to big things in Hollywood.

    This is what the Australian film industry should be making more of – serious films that question our identity as Australians. That is not to say that there is no place in the industry for Mick Molloy-style entertainment, as captured so well in Crackerjack and his latest Bad Eggs, or the Working Dog productions The Castle and The Dish. These are expressions of the quirky humour aspects indicative of our culture. But they are perhaps not interpretations of the core of what it means to be part of a former British colony isolated in the Pacific, and all the sociological complexities inherent therein.

    Few shows have ever captured what it means to grow up in Australia, and what Australian identity really is on a personal level. Given the fact that a significant part of the Australian population is Catholic, Brides of Christ is a rare glimpse at but one minute facet of that much larger question - who are we as Australians? If you have never seen it, now is the time.

Video

    Presented in 1.33:1, Full Frame, this is the original aspect ratio for the series.

    Sadly, the quality of the picture is not so good, apparently being transferred from a VHS master and not the original print. This fact can be discerned from the occasional video faults which occur. I do not know why the ABC did not go back to the source and put together a special edition of this important work. All too often we are losing our cinema history to decay and neglect.

    The quality of the transfer is perhaps only slightly better than the Dawson’s Creek: Season One DVD set which I recently reviewed. Just like that series, the picture here is persistently grainy, especially in shots where the lighting is shadowy or subdued.

    Colour is a little muted, although it conforms to early 1990s film technology in terms of its colour palette. I think also a certain filtering process was used to give this a certain feel, to highlight the fact that it is set in the 1960s.

    For the most part, though, the picture is generally well defined, and you never have difficulty discerning what is going on. Shadow detail is pretty good, but the graininess that comes incumbent with these scenes is quite annoying.

    There are several film-to-video transfer problems here: some moire at 28:17 and 31:19 during “Diane”; aliasing on some decorative edging at 39:39 during “Frances”; and some really bad posterization at 41:40 during the same episode. There were two very distracting video glitches, as if the tape had been twisted, both during “Rosemary” – one at 14:22, another at 20:20.

    Film artefacts were fairly minimal, with a few white specks or dirt drifting around here and there.

    There is one set of English subtitles for the Hearing Impaired. They are yellow with a black border, easy to read, and convey the story quite accurately.

    The dual-layer pause is during the second episode on both discs — at 27:22 during “Frances” and at 28:41 during “Paul”. Both occur during pauses in dialogue and are reasonably non-intrusive.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There is only the original English stereo track available here in Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo.

    While certainly not an overwhelming track by any means, it is quite adequate. The most important part, dialogue, is clear and easy to understand throughout. There were no audio sync problems that I saw.

    Unfortunately, there is little in the way of surround information or directional cues. The fantastic score by Mario Millo has a moderate range. This could probably have done with some tweaking during the transfer process, but sadly little to nothing has been done.

    There was no subwoofer use.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menus

    All menus are presented in 1.33:1, non-16x9 enhanced. They are static with the theme playing in 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo.

    As yet, there is no R1 release of this DVD.

    Brides Of Christ is an excellent Australian production looking at what it means to be Roman Catholic and Australian growing up in the turbulent 1960s. Intense interpersonal drama at its best.

    The video quality is not the best, and I am hoping for a future remastering by the ABC of this important work.

    The sound is a straight-out 2.0 Dolby Stereo mix, and while it conveys the story, it would have been nice if some effort had been put in to remaster it.

    There are, sadly, no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall