'Reel Men is an excursion into a realm of Australian cinematic history many might have considered quite barren. Against the celebrated colour and belligerence of the cinema of the 1970s, the productions of the 1950s have come to be seen as stultified and dreary affairs, but Barnett’s book is a lively overturning of any such assumption. It offers a rich analysis of 14 feature films made during the period to achieve this, looking at the content and consumption of movies such as Sons of Matthew (1949), The Shiralee (1957), Smiley (1956), King of the Coral Sea (1954), Jedda (1955) and On the Beach (1959). Reel Men is primarily concerned to show the way in which this catalogue reveals the multiplicity of and tensions within masculine identity, and each chapter details the ways in which these dynamics were implicated in the broader social, cultural and political concerns of 1950s Australia: the national character, the responsibilities of breadwinning, the strength of family life and the role of the father within it, the imperatives of White Australia, and the maintenance of (hetero)sexuality.' (Introduction)
