An epic is not easily made, especially one that deals with the queasy emotions that attend the creation of a society built on racial oppression, yet Jimmie Blacksmith is only Schepisi's second feature; it's a highly sophisticated production, made in Panavision (the cinematographer was Ian Baker), and one of the rare movies in which a wide screen is integral to the conception... Schepisi picked great material, and in mapping out the screenplay he took much of the dialogue right from the book. This is generally a mistake. but not with Keneally, who is a dramatist as well as a novelist. He writes dialogue that jumps up from the page, bites you on the nose, and makes you laugh...

The novel and the movie add to each other. Keneally's passion comes out in barbaric, pixillated humor; Schepisi's vision is less comic, but his work is visually impassioned, and it, too, seems inexorable. The smooth, high-strung tone is set right at the start, and I don't think there's an inexpressive frame of film in the entire movie. Schepisi's chant has a different rhythm: Keneallv writes spiccato, Schepisi's moviemaking is legato. Keneally writes with the comic virulence of an Irish-Australian observing the stingy Scots, who can't open their fists even when they're the lords of a great land.