of good action scenes were cut because of the restrictions on time and budget, much to my disappointment and anger then. We ended up with a very slow-moving narrative and a more intellectual film than I had anticipated... What we have still to learn in this country is that you cannot fix up a film in the editing room. Release A year after filming finished, the movie was screened at Cannes. The film soundtrack by Peter Best was initially released on LP. Years later it was released again on compact disc along with "Devil in the Flesh". It features a simple but beautiful melody: part of a haunting score which is one of the best in Australia film history. The soundtrack recording was produced by Peter Best and released by Festival Records and 1M1 Records. We of the Never Never grossed $3,112,000 at the box office in Australia, which is equivalent to $9,055,920 in 2009 dollars. The movie was also popular in England. Critical reception The New York Times commented: If We of the Never Never sounds simple, old-fashioned and as suffocatingly noble as its heroine, it is. It's a film of far more anthropological than dramatic interest since much of the action involves aboriginal characters, and since it was filmed in the thinly settled region Mrs. Gunn actually visited. There is an adventure here... that children will enjoy, and the scenery is unusual. But otherwise, little of interest goes on. And the film, in depicting Jeannie's relations with the aborigines, celebrates her open-mindedness with a pride that's dated and unseemly. Time Out London comments: Down under, We of the Never Never is a well-loved turn-of-the-century classic by a Mrs.Aeneas Gunn, who as a genteel Melbourne bride was expected to add a woman's touch to her husband's isolated cattle station. Phlegmatic British audiences, not much in touch with the pioneer spirit, will find in this adaptation an unashamedly old-fashioned celebration of corseted pluck as Jeannie Gunn rolls up her lacey sleeves and wins the grudging respect of the hitherto misogynistic stockmen. It's a pleasurably predictable formula, kept afloat by plangent orchestration, glorious cinematography, and a continuous supply of death-beds and simple outback funerals. The film's real difficulty lies in Jeannie's treatment of the Aborigines. She's nice to them but patronising... Is Auzins inviting us to make up our own minds about her naive colonialism, or just dodging what could have