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Screen cap from promotional trailer (re-released by Umbrella Entertainment)
form y separately published work icon Forty Thousand Horsemen single work   film/TV  
Issue Details: First known date: 1940... 1940 Forty Thousand Horsemen
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Red Gallagher and his best pals Jim and Larry are bored Australian soldiers in Egypt in 1916, constantly getting up to mischief in Cairo nightclubs. When German-backed Turkish forces attack British outposts in the Sinai desert, the Australians rush to the defence, as mounted troops of the Australian Light Horse regiments. They take part in a fierce battle at Romani, then drive on to Gaza, where Jim and Larry are killed. Red is wounded and lost in the desert, but rescued by a French woman, dressed as an Arab boy. Juliet spies on the German preparations at Beersheba, as Red rejoins his unit in time for the final battle. The Lighthorsemen charge Beersheba across open ground, and are victorious against the odds. Red and Juliet find each other in Jerusalem, after the Turks are routed.' (Source: Australian Screen online)

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Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Works about this Work

Films That Help Us Remember Them David Stratton , 2020 single work column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 25 April 2020; (p. 13)

'On May 1, 1980, I was invited to attend a reception held at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, at which two of Australia’s best-known businessmen made an important announcement to the invited guests. The men, Rupert Murdoch and Robert Stigwood, were Australians who were well known around the world: the “media magnate and [the] entertainment entrepreneur” (as The Sunday Telegraph reported a few days later) used the occasion to announce the formation of a new company, R&R (later known as Associated R&R Films), a joint venture between News Corporation and the Robert Stigwood Organisation; the latter company had been responsible for hit films such as Tommy, Saturday Night Fever and Grease. A total of $10m would be invested in local productions, the first — and, as it turned out, the last — of which would be Gallipoli, directed by Peter Weir, produced by Patricia Lovell and scripted by David Williamson.' (Introduction) 

Unsung Aussie Filmmakers – Grant Taylor : A Top Ten Stephen Vagg , 2019 single work essay
— Appears in: FilmInk , 29 July 2019;
“They Said It'd Be an Adventure” : Masculinity, Nation, and Empire in Centennial Australian World War I Film and Television Glen Donnar , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Popular Culture , vol. 51 no. 6 2018; (p. 1356-1375)

'The World War I Gallipoli campaign in modern Turkey in April 1915 was calamitous from the outset, with the amphibious assault by British and Allied forces landing well off course. Australia's first major military engagement since achieving nationhood in 1901, its chief success would become their stealth evacuation, which saw seventy thousand men covertly withdrawn over nine days and nights in December 1915. The campaign was ultimately futile and deemed immaterial to the outcome of the war. Such an ignominious defeat at the hands of the Ottoman Empire would seem an unlikely source for a national myth. It lacks, for example, “the psychic reassurance of triumph over the sources of threat” and the defeat of enemies that Graham Dawson identifies as a key psychic and social function of adventure narratives and soldier heroes (282). Yet, the ill‐fated Gallipoli campaign is popularly held in Australia's cultural imagination as the “birth of a nation” for a former colony then still under the yoke of the British Empire. In Australian politics and culture, the youthful nation's presumed character was forged in war and embodied in the deeds of its young men, in spite of ultimate defeat.'  (Introduction)

What Do Mad Max's Six Oscars Mean for the Australian Film Industry? Vincent O'Donnell , 2016 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 1 March 2016;
'The career of Dr George Miller reminds me of that of Charles Chauvel, one of the greatest showmen of the Australian cinema. Both men – though separated by many decades – have employed epic cinematic forms and nationalistic themes. ...'
Rewind : The Making of Breaker Morant Geoff Stanton , 2016 single work column
— Appears in: FilmInk , 25 April 2016;
Portraits of Settler History in The Proposition Carol Hart , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: Senses of Cinema , January - March no. 38 2006;
'Hailed as an antipodean Western, this Nick Cave scripted and John Hillcoat directed feature raises considerable debate about the representation of Australia's colonial history.' (Publisher's abstract)
y separately published work icon Featuring Australia : The Cinema of Charles Chauvel Stuart Cunningham , Sydney : Allen and Unwin , 1991 Z808336 1991 single work biography
Memories of a Movie Maverick Phil Brown , 2013 single work column
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 27-28 July 2013; (p. 10-11)
Lights, Camera, Fire! Cinematic Representations of World War I's Middle East Front and its Palestine Campaign Yvonne Kozlovsky-Golan , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society , December vol. 99 no. 2 2013; (p. 170-189)
'Two important Australian feature films, separated by nearly 50 years, form the basis of this article's examination of World War I's Middle East front through a study of the cinematic corpus referring to the war and its images. Charles Chauvel's 40,000 Horsemen (1941) and Simon Wincer's The Lighthorsemen (1987) offer a spring board for the exploration of the visual aspects of viewers' historical, social and cultural memory shaping the nearly forgotten story of the forces of the British Empire that fought in Palestine and Eastern Transjordan. The cinematic medium developed its own unique signs for wars, usually portraying wartime as a romantic epoch, and not as death and destruction.' (Author's introduction)
Our Golden Age Michael Bodey , 2014 single work column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 29-39 March 2014; (p. 12-13)
Last amended 1 Oct 2014 15:28:25
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