Peter Weir

Picnic at Hanging Rock

Picnic at Hanging Rock

This sensual and striking chronicle of a disappearance and its aftermath put director Peter Weir on the map and helped usher in a new era of Australian cinema. Based on an acclaimed 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock is set at the turn of the twentieth century and concerns a small group of students from an all-female college who vanish, along with a chaperone, while on a St. Valentine’s Day outing. Less a mystery than a journey into the mystic, as well as an inquiry into issues of class and sexual repression in Australian society, Weir’s gorgeous, disquieting film is a work of poetic horror whose secrets haunt viewers to this day.

Film Info

  • Australia
  • 1975
  • 107 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.66:1/1.78:1
  • English
  • Spine #29

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Peter Weir and director of photography Russell Boyd, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
  • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
  • Interview with Weir
  • Program on the making of the film, featuring interviews with executive producer Patricia Lovell, producers Hal McElroy and Jim McElroy, and cast members
  • Introduction by film scholar David Thomson, author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film
  • On-set documentary hosted by Lovell and featuring interviews with Weir, actor Rachel Roberts, and source-novel author Joan Lindsay
  • Homesdale (1971), a black comedy by Weir
  • Trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by author Megan Abbott and an excerpt from film scholar Marek Haltof’s 1996 book Peter Weir: When Cultures Collide

    Cover by Eric Skillman

Purchase Options

Coming soon, available Apr 9, 2024

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Peter Weir and director of photography Russell Boyd, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
  • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
  • Interview with Weir
  • Program on the making of the film, featuring interviews with executive producer Patricia Lovell, producers Hal McElroy and Jim McElroy, and cast members
  • Introduction by film scholar David Thomson, author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film
  • On-set documentary hosted by Lovell and featuring interviews with Weir, actor Rachel Roberts, and source-novel author Joan Lindsay
  • Homesdale (1971), a black comedy by Weir
  • Trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by author Megan Abbott and an excerpt from film scholar Marek Haltof’s 1996 book Peter Weir: When Cultures Collide

    Cover by Eric Skillman
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Cast
Rachel Roberts
Mrs. Appleyard
Vivean Gray
Miss McCraw
Helen Morse
Mlle. de Poitiers
Kirsty Child
Miss Lumley
Anthony Llewellyn-Jones
Tom
Jacki Weaver
Minnie
Frank Gunnell
Mr. Whitehead
Anne Lambert
Miranda
Karen Robson
Irma
Jane Vallis
Marion
Christine Schuler
Edith
Margaret Nelson
Sara
Ingrid Mason
Rosamund
Jenny Lovell
Blanche
Janet Murray
Juliana
Wyn Roberts
Sergeant Bumpher
Kay Taylor
Mrs. Bumpher
Garry McDonald
Constable Jones
Martin Vaughan
Ben Hussey
Jack Fegan
Dr. McKenzie
Peter Collingwood
Colonel Fitzhubert
Olga Dickie
Mrs. Fitzhubert
Dominic Guard
Michael Fitzhubert
John Jarrett
Albert Crundall
Credits
Director
Peter Weir
Produced by
Hal McElroy
Produced by
Jim McElroy
Executive producer
Patricia Lovell
Executive producer for the South Australian Film Corporation
John Graves
Screenplay by
Cliff Green
From the novel by
Joan Lindsay
Director of photography
Russell Boyd
Art direction
David Copping
Artistic adviser to the director
Martin Sharp
Editor
Max Lemon
Flûte de Pan played by
Gheorghe Zamfir
Additional original music composed by
Bruce Smeaton

Current

Peter Weir on Picnic at Hanging Rock
Peter Weir on Picnic at Hanging Rock
The mysteries of Picnic at Hanging Rock live on, even for the director himself. In this excerpt from a 2003 interview on our new special edition of the film, Peter Weir reminisces about how the project first came to him and reveals that Picnic noveli…
Picnic at Hanging Rock: What We See and What We Seem
Picnic at Hanging Rock: What We See and What We Seem

Peter Weir’s sun-dappled, sexually charged nightmare about a disappearance in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Australia still unnerves due to its radical lack of resolution.

By Megan Abbott

Picnic at Hanging Rock
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Horror need not always be a long-fanged gentleman in evening clothes or a dismembered corpse or a doctor who keeps a brain in his gold fish bowl. It may be a warm sunny day, the innocence of girlhood and hints of unexplored sexuality that combine to …

By Vincent Canby

Adventures in Moviegoing with Megan Abbott
Adventures in Moviegoing with Megan Abbott

Award-winning crime novelist Megan Abbott discusses her formative experiences as a film lover in the latest episode of our Channel-exclusive series Adventures in Moviegoing.

Christopher Radcliff and Lauren Wolkstein’s Top 10
Christopher Radcliff and Lauren Wolkstein’s Top 10

Christopher Radcliff and Lauren Wolkstein are New York City–based filmmakers.

Julia Cafritz’s Top 10
Julia Cafritz’s Top 10

At the beginning of Julia Cafritz’s senior year of high school, she saw Peter Weir’s The Last Wave and decided to drop out of high school, skip college, move to Australia, marry Mr. Weir and devote her life to filmmaking. Her parents said no. Two

Meg Baird’s Top 10
Meg Baird’s Top 10

Meg Baird is a founding member of the experimental folk collective Espers (Drag City). Her latest solo record, Don't Weigh Down the Light, is currently available through Drag City.