'' Wake in Fright '' found a favourable public response in France , where it ran for five months , and in the United Kingdom . However , despite receiving such critical support at Cannes and in Australia , '' Wake in Fright '' suffered poor domestic box-office returns . Although there were complaints that the film 's distributor , United Artists , had failed to promote the film successfully , it was also thought that the film was " perhaps too uncomfortably direct and uncompromising to draw large Australian audiences " . During an early Australian screening , one man stood up , pointed at the screen and protested " That 's not us ! " , to which Jack Thompson yelled back " Sit down , mate . It is us . " In his 1972 review for '' The New York Times '' , Roger Greenspun praised the film for its atmosphere " of general foreboding that crystalizes often enough into particular terror and that is not quite like anything else I can remember feeling at the movies . Certain science-fiction films come closest to it , especially those in which some evil alien presence has taken over a community that to all outward appearances remains normal — with only the slightest most fugitive hint that something somehow is hideously wrong . " A review of the Cannes premiere in '' Variety '' called it " a creditable effort " from the Australian film industry , " even allowing for the fact that key technical and acting credits are British . The end result is a forceful glimpse of little-known territory in which the emphasis is on booze and violence , with a touch of sex for good measure . " Gillian Hanson of '' The Monthly Film Bulletin '' wrote , " Canadian director Ted Kotcheff has captured the mindless brutality of life in the outback with extraordinary felicity ... Yet , despite its unmistakable competence , the film 's bite is blunted by the script 's shallow and largely unmotivated characterisation of John Grant , and by the loosely-knit and over-melodramatic story line which never achieves thematic coherence . " The un-restored version of '' Wake in Fright '' received a three stars ( out of four ) rating from the American film reviewer Leonard Maltin in his '' 2006 Movie Guide '' , while Brian McFarlane , writing in 1999 in '' The Oxford Companion to Australian Film '' , said that it was " almost uniquely unsettling in the history of new Australian Cinema " . Askmen.com echoed these sentiments , citing that " it 's not hard to see why the dusty savagery and clown-faced surrealism of Ted Kotcheff 's fourth feature was never shown on telly at the time . " Following the film 's restoration , '' Wake in Fright '' screened at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival on 15 May 2009 when it was selected as a Cannes Classic title by the head of the department , Martin Scorsese . '' Wake in Fright '' is one of only two films ever to screen twice in the history of the festival . Scorsese said , " '' Wake in Fright '' is a deeply -- and I mean deeply -- unsettling and disturbing movie . I saw it when it premiered at Cannes in 1971 , and it left me speechless . Visually , dramatically , atmospherically and psychologically , it 's beautifully calibrated and it gets under your skin one encounter at a time , right along with the protagonist played by Gary Bond . I 'm excited that '' Wake in Fright '' has been preserved and restored and that it is finally getting the exposure it deserves . " Roger Ebert reviewed the re-release and said " It 's not dated . It is powerful , genuinely shocking and rather amazing . It comes billed as a ' horror film ' and contains a great deal of horror , but all of the horror is human and brutally realistic . " Don Groves of SBS gave the film four stars out of five , claiming that " '' Wake in Fright '' deserves to rank as an Australian classic as it packs enormous emotional force , was bravely and inventively directed , and features superb performances . " American critic Rex Reed , an early advocate of '' Wake in Fright '' , praised the film 's restoration as " the best movie news of the year " , and said it " may be the greatest Australian film ever made " . According to Australian musician and screenwriter Nick Cave , it is " the best and most terrifying film about Australia in existence . " The film has an approval rating of 100 % and a rating average score of 8.71 / 10 on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , based on 51 reviews . The site 's consensus states : " A disquieting classic of Australian cinema , '' Wake in Fright '' surveys a landscape both sun-drenched and ruthlessly dark . " '' Wake in Fright '' is also listed in the 2015 edition of the film reference book '' 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die ''
2009 Cannes Film Festival
2009 Cannes Film Festival
Wake in Fright