Bruce Beresford has left a greater imprint on the national sensibility than most people might think. From The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972) through The Getting of Wisdom (1977) and Breaker Morant (1980), he has demonstrated a virtuoso ability to dramatise Australianness, classic and modern. His films Don’s Party (1976) and The Club (1980) mean that we are never likely to forget the idiom in which David Williamson first represented us, because Beresford has made it part of the cinematic argot of the country; a new production of a play is automatically measured by how much the actors stand up to the classic performances of Graeme Kennedy or Ray Barrett or John Hargreaves in Beresford’s vision of the plays.

Beyond all narrow nationalism, cultural or caricatured, Beresford is a film-maker of formidable elegance and economy. Long past the time anyone would have imagined that such a film could be made he directed the great Jessica Tandy, with Morgan Freeman, in Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and gave to the old-duck movie its high watermark and its abiding example of how the style and poignancy of age could animate a film and make it luminous.