The cinema has transmitted the Anzac legend with extraordinary emotive power. Here is the first extended study of how the Great War Anzac legend has been portrayed in Australian film and television productions over 80 years. Celluloid Anzacs traces the evolving image from its origins as a derivative of British military myths to the controversial early days of its Australian identity in the years between the world wars, when the legend adopted its comic, lean bushman as its archetypical hero, and then into the nationalistic fervour of the 1980s, where the legend finally acquired its exclusively Australian identity and sharp anti- British edge. By building the story into the broader Australian context, the book shows how films have shaped, and been shaped by, one of Australia's most cherished defining national mythologies.
