Cinefórum-Clásico

A remarkable film from New Zealand on the theme of separating. The husband and wife, played by Bruno Lawrence and Anna Jemison, embody a basic male-female conflict. He's flesh-and-blood and growing bald; she's French-born and fine-boned and fastidious. He runs the business he inherited from his father--the Smash Palace, a vast wrecking yard in an isolated area in New Zealand--and, except for the pleasure he takes in watching their 7-year-old daughter Georgie scooting around in miniature cars, he lives like a single man, puttering with motors, burning up the country roads in the Grand-Prix Formula One racer he's restoring, and drinking beer with his pals. He ignores his wife's complaints, but when she leaves him and, enjoying the upper hand, gets a legal order to prevent him from seeing Georgie, he goes a little crazy. This affable, intelligent man isn't driven mad in the funny, cuckoo sense but in a special, modern, obsessed way. The rage of fathers deprived of their children--something that few men experienced in the past--is no doubt a key madness of our age. The director, Roger Donaldson, has the kind of neo-neorealist technique that a viewer is unconscious of; the director disappears into the story. Even the easy, dry wit seems to belong to the material, along with the summery light. This film can pull you in deep, but some people don't like its almost documentary surface and the fact that the characters are believably real and not unusual--they feel it's too much like life, and that they see it going on all the time. Donaldson's handling of the little girl (Greer Robson) who plays Georgie is beyond praise.
Pauline Kael

Step by step, this powerful movie takes a man from perfect happiness into a personal hell. By the end of the film, the man is behaving irrationally, but here's the frightening thing: Because we've followed him every step of the way, we have to admit he's behaving as we ourselves might, in the same circumstances.
“Smash Palace” is one of 1982's best films, an examination of much the same ground as “Shoot the Moon,” but a better film, because it has the patience to explore the ways in which people can become consumed by anger (“Shoot the Moon” contented itself with the outward symptoms). One of the reasons the movie works so well is the performances, which are all the stronger because they come from actors we have not seen before. Bruno Lawrence, bald-headed, wiry, tough, and surprisingly tender, is just right as the man who loses his family.
This film, so emotionally wise and observant that we learn from it why people sometimes make the front pages with guns in their hands and try to explain that it's all because of love. Love, yes, but also the terrible frustration of trying to control events, to make people do what you want them to do, what you "know" would make them happy--no matter what they think. The hero of “Smash Palace” does not act wisely, but if we are honest, it's hard to see where we might have acted differently.
Roger Ebert

Roger Donaldson was born in Ballarat, Australia, in 1945. At 19 he was studying to be a geologist, when he crossed the Tasman to avoid being drafted to fight in Vietnam. After a fruitless stretch as a Nelson beach photographer and a stint as an Auckland photographer's apprentice, a meeting with ad-man Bob Harvey led to his first filmmaking commissions:
"I came to New Zealand and fell in love with the place. I'd wanted to make movies since I was a kid, so being forced out of home, it seemed a good time to make the switch. I decided to start with commercials. My attitude was that nobody was going to make any openings for me, so my next move was to go down to the library and find a book on how to load a Bolex."
Donaldson began ploughing his advertising revenues into a series of self-financed documentaries under the banner of his company, Aardvark Films.
1971's Offerings to the God of Speed, which debuted on TV slot Survey, was about Invercargill DIY legend Burt Munro, who set speed records in Utah on his ancient Indian motorbike (Donaldson's dream of turning Munro's story into a movie would finally bear fruit 34 years later, with hit movie The World's Fastest Indian).
Donaldson also directed adventure documentaries that saw him sailing around Cape Horn with yachtsman Peter Mulgrew, and a series with Sir Edmund Hillary shot in Nepal and New Zealand. The first, The Kaipo Wall, is classic Kiwi adventuring as Sir Ed takes an A-Team of friends into unexplored Fiordland; the second, a Yeti-hunting Nepal adventure, remains uncompleted.
Donaldson then met Ian Mune, a firebrand performer and writer, who introduced him to a world of actors and other people wanting to make New Zealand drama.
Their first film together was a TV drama called Derek (1974), the deadpan tale of a male office worker (Mune) confronting turning 30. It was a sensation for several censor-challenging scenes, and led to the commissioning of a landmark series of TV dramas, Winners & Losers (1975), based on stories by notable NZ authors. Donaldson and Mune shared directing duties.
Donaldson's first feature was an adaptation of CK Stead's novel Smith's Dream. Sleeping Dogs (1977), as it was now titled, starred Mune and Sam Neill (in a career-launching performance as a man alone against a police state). The film's arrival coincided with an audience willing to support our stories on screen, and its relative success is credited with  providing the impetus for the founding of the New Zealand Film Commission.
Donaldson followed Sleeping Dogs with 50 minute childen's adventure Nutcase, and two episodes of TV's swagman taleJocko.
Smash Palace (1981) starred Bruno Lawrence in one of his best performances, as a petrolhead father fighting for access to his daughter. Made quickly so that it might make a deadline to play at the Cannes Film Festival, the picture become a Kiwi classic, and got Donaldson noticed in Hollywood. Critic Pauline Kael described it as "amazingly accomplished".