Picnic at Hanging Rock

Released 1975
Stars Rachel Roberts, Vivean Gray, Helen Morse, Kirsty Child, Anthony Llewellyn-Jones, Jacki Weaver, Anne Lambert
Directed by Peter Weir

On a drowsy St. Valentine's Day in 1900, a party of girls from a strict boarding school in Australia goes on a day's outing to Hanging Rock, a geological outcropping not far from their school. Three of the girls and one of their teachers disappear into thin air. On this foundation, Peter Weir's "Picnic at Hanging Rock" constructs a film of haunting mystery and buried sexual hysteria. It also employs two of the hallmarks of modern Australian films: beautiful cinematography and stories about the chasm between settlers from Europe and the mysteries of their ancient new home.

The result is a movie that creates a specific place in your mind; free of plot, lacking any final explanation, it exists as an experience. In a sense, the viewer is like the girls who went along on the picnic and returned safely: For us, as for them, the characters who disappeared remain always frozen in time, walking out of view, never to be seen again.

Summary by Roger Ebert