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Bookmark this pageThe Getting of Wisdom (1977)
Director: Bruce Beresford
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Drenched in lushly tasteful Victorian production values, this evocation of a warmly sentimental education, set in a Melbourne girls' boarding school, achieves little by way of justifying an adaptation of Ethel Richardson's autobiographical novel of 1910. A perky feminine independence may have proved controversial at the time of its writing, but here emerges as a mere cliché-ridden prelude to an unseen but inevitable brilliant career. Barry Humphries plays straight as a cleric, when a little of his invigorating vulgarity might have pepped the proceedings up considerably, while Beresford's display of versatility only points up his comparative strengths in the almost all-male worlds of The Club and The Money Movers.Author: PT
Cast & crew
Director: Bruce Beresford
Producer: Phillip Adams
Cast: Susannah Fowle, Sheila Helpmann, Patricia Kennedy, John Waters, Barry Humphries, Kerry Armstrong full cast
Duration: 101 mins
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