I watched Glimpses of South Australia and it was like a weird dream

Is it worth a watch?

If you have a spare ten minutes and you like feeling like a ghost, then yes. Watch it if you think old archives are cool or if you just want to see what Adelaide looked like before everything got paved over.

You will probably hate this if you need things like 'dialogue' or 'characters' or 'a reason to exist.' It is literally just footage.

The Vibe

Watching this feels like finding a box of old photos in a basement, but the photos are twitching. The film quality is pretty rough in spots, which I actually liked.

It’s got that jittery, nervous energy that old hand-cranked cameras have. Everything moves a little too fast, like everyone in the 1920s was in a massive hurry to get nowhere.

There is a specific shot of a harbor where the water looks like molten silver. It’s probably just the way the light hit the old film stock, but it looks magical for about five seconds before the scene cuts away too early.

The editing is... well, calling it editing is generous. It just kind of happens.

One moment you are looking at a big building, and then suddenly—BAM—you are looking at sheep. There is no transition. It’s very abrupt.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Glimpses of South Australia (1930) through its definitive frames.

I found myself staring at the people in the background more than the scenery. There’s a guy in a very tall hat who looks directly into the lens and you can tell he’s thinking, 'What is that box that man is holding?'

Random Observations

• The hats. My god, the hats. Why were they so big?
• The streets look so empty it feels like a post-apocalypse movie sometimes.
• There is a dog that runs across a park and it's the most exciting thing that happens for three minutes.
• The film flickers so much it gave me a slight headache, but a good one? If that makes sense.

It’s a lot different than something like The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks which actually tries to tell a joke. This isn't trying to do anything except show you a tree or a boat.

I guess it reminds me a bit of Something to Do in the sense that it feels like a government project. Like someone was paid to prove that South Australia was a real place where things happened.

There is a sequence with some farming machinery that is deeply boring. I actually stopped paying attention and started looking at the grain on the film instead. It looks like swarming ants.

But then it shifts to a coastline, and the waves have this weird, heavy look to them. It doesn't look like modern water. It looks thicker.

I wonder if the people in this movie knew we'd be looking at them on glowing screens a hundred years later. They probably just wanted to get home for dinner.

It’s not a 'movie' in the way we think of them now. It’s more like a flickering ghost of a memory that doesn't even belong to you.

If you're bored, give it a look. If you're sleepy, it might actually put you to sleep, but in a nice way. Like a lullaby made of static and old dust.