When Australian New age movies burst on to world movie theater screens in the 1970s, sceptical audiences were initially baffled by the broad accents and strange colloquialisms.

Sunday Too Far Away, a renowned tale about male culture and commitment in a 1950s shearing shed, was the first success of Australia's golden age of cinema however Americans were especially dumbfounded by it, producer Matt Carroll remembers.

"They identified that Sunday was an excellent movie however they didn't understand it," he says.

"It was quite incomprehensible to anyone who wasn't an Australian. At American screenings, you might as well have had it in Dutch."

But French audiences were even more welcoming of the film at Cannes Directors Fortnight, thanks to the better half of an Adelaide vehicle dealership who 'd sold Carroll a Peugeot.

"She said, 'oh yes beloved, I understand Parisian street slang, I'll equate it all for you (into subtitles)'," Carroll continues.

"I keep in mind being in the cinema and the first thing that comes up is somebody in the shearing shed says about the squatter, 'his shit doesn't stink'. When it was equated, the Parisian slang for that is 'he farts above his asshole'."

In the big screening space, "the entire audience just went nuts, absolutely insane, and we got a big sale to France", Carroll laughs.

"It's the language of the bush," describes legendary Australian actor Jack Thompson, who portrayed the hard-drinking gun shearer, Foley.

"There's a terrific camaraderie revealed because motion picture. Sunday says something far more profound about the Australian character than a number of other movies that examined our triumphes and failures."

Thompson, who left home at 14 to work as a jackaroo in the NT, states "it resembled a journal, it was just how individuals acted - I keep in mind, since as a teenager, I was in those sheds.

"Sunday Too Far has a truly fundamental part in my career and in my memory; I 'd dealt with that wool press, I 'd selected up that wool. I knew how difficult it was ... it was the world of working men."

Thompson was a star of a slew of other New Wave movies, consisting of Breaker Morant, Mad Dog Morgan, The Club and The Man From Snowy River.

Carroll remembers also feeling well certified to be associated with Sunday Too Far, which was filmed at Carriewerloo Station, near Port Augusta, and Quorn.

"I matured on a sheep residential or commercial property so I found out how to class wool. My honours thesis remained in Australian shearing sheds. So when we required to discover a shearing shed, I knew precisely where they were," he states.

"And Jack and I were sharing a home together, and I knew that he was a shearer, and I was there when the director stated, 'I don't understand where we're going to find shearers from'. And I said, 'Well, I know'.

Thompson and Carroll just recently checked out Adelaide for a 50th anniversary screening of Sunday Too Far, staged by SA Film Corporation, which played a key function in the era.

"The SAFC was an important beacon in the growth of the Australian film industry," states Thompson.

"Tale after tale essential to our understanding of ourselves was informed and financed by that entity."

The New York Times explained Australian New Wave as "recording a minute of flexibility and abundance that was over almost before we understood it" and "having a vitality, a love of open space and a propensity for unexpected violence and languorous sexuality".

"That's me," says Thompson, now aged 84, deadpan.

"Used to be, mate," chuckles Carroll, 80.

As a young star, it resembled "riding the crest of a wave, it was stunning", states Thompson.

"There was certainly a really focused vigor, an unique beauty, unlike anything else at the time."

Carroll, who likewise produced Breaker Morant and Storm Boy for SAFC, states the 1970s was an impressive duration for Australian films.

"More than 220 movies, that's more than 20 films a year. And when you check out the titles, it's simply incredible," he states.

"We never had another period like that, with the originality and the imagination."

The SAFC's second feature, the enigmatic and enormous Picnic at Hanging Rock, which also turns 50 this year, became an icon of Australian movie theater.

"The terrific thing that happened after that is that Margaret Fink made My Brilliant Career, and the Americans understood it," says Carroll.

"And then Breaker Morant came along and they clicked with it and it had big results, and then the 2nd Mad Max was a giant hit. So those 3 movies were key to opening up the American market."

Thompson keeps in mind that Australia made the world's first feature-length narrative motion picture, The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1906, "and we had an essential Australian film market in the silent age approximately 1927".

"Hollywood and the American investment in theatre chains here had the ability to dominate the Australian movie market, and essentially, in between 1930 and the 70s, nothing much happened in Australian cinema," he says.

While Sunday Too Far was New age's first business success, 1971's Wake In Fright is commonly concerned as the age's opening film.

It was Thompson's very first film and the last for veteran character actor Chips Rafferty, who died of a cardiovascular disease before it was launched.

It evaluated at Cannes and received favourable reactions in France and the UK but struggled at the Australian ticket office.

It's the story of an instructor waylaid in a mining town where a gambling spree leaves him broke. Amid a haze of alcohol, he gets involved in a gruesome kangaroo hunt and is likewise subjected to ethical deterioration.

It ran for just 10 days in Sydney, and 14 in Melbourne, Thompson recalls, "and individuals were saying 'that's not us', despite the truth the book was written by an Australian".

"Because when we were seen on screen (previously), we were seen as these enjoyable caricatures, we weren't used to seeing it and we didn't wish to see it," he states.

During an early Australian screening, when a guy stood, pointed at the screen and protested "that's not us!", Thompson famously screamed back "sit down, mate. It is us".