Actor Tom Burlinson remembers sitting in the back of a Mercedes Benz with Sigrid Thornton when he first heard the music for The Man from Snowy River.
The pair were heading out for dinner with director George Miller, when one of the film’s producers tossed some cassette tapes through the car window and onto the front seat – demo tapes for the soundtrack.
Miller climbed into the driver’s seat and picked one to play at random, Burlinson recalls, and Bruce Rowland’s Jessica’s Theme came through the speakers.
“We all sat there totally transfixed,” Burlinson told AAP.
“George Miller immediately started visualising how he was going to shoot that breaking in the colt sequence, and the young man and young woman falling in love with each other.”
That, of course, was Burlinson playing Jim Craig, and Thornton as Jessica Harrison.
More than 40 years since the film’s release in 1982, their love story made The Man from Snowy River a classic, as did Bruce Rowland’s soundtrack.
The heart-racing scenes of Burlinson on horseback careening down high country gullies had something to do with it too.
For the first time, the film will be screened with a live soundtrack, with the music provided by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vanessa Scammell at Hamer Hall.
The project has been four years in the making, in part because there are complex technical requirements for lifting the film score while keeping its sound effects.
Based on AB ‘Banjo’ Paterson’s bush poem of the same name, the film was an immediate success with Australian box office sales totalling almost $17.5 million.
It was originally shot on Panavision with a Dolby Stereo soundtrack and four decades on, Burlinson believes the filmmaking has stood the test of time.
“When you see it on the big screen, the action, the scenery, the romance, the music, all of that stands up so well,” he said.
For both Burlinson and Thornton, making the film was transformational.
“It changed the trajectory of my working life, it enhanced my understanding of filmmaking as storytelling, and it opened my eyes much wider to the magnificence of the Australian landscape,” Thornton said.
“I’m very proud to have been part of a film that continues to resonate across the generations.”
The world premiere of The Man from Snowy River in Concert is on from August 17 to 19 with Sigrid Thornton and Tom Burlinson as special guests.
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