Resource Key
LEVEL 1
brief, basic information laid out in an easy-to-read format. May use informal language. (Includes most news articles)
LEVEL 2
provides additional background information and further reading. Introduces some subject-specific language.
LEVEL 3
lengthy, detailed information. Frequently uses technical/subject-specific language. (Includes most analytical articles)
Databases
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JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Scholarly resources on JSTOR include Archival and Current Journals, Books, and Primary Sources.
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West Australian Digital Archive This link opens in a new window
The West Australia Archive Digital Editions provides full text searching of past issues of the West Australian. Each issue is searchable the day after publication.
Introduction
The film opens with the arrival of a 30ish woman named Ada (Holly Hunter) and her young daughter, Flora (Anna Paquin), on a stormy gray beach. They have been rowed ashore, along with Ada's piano, to meet a local bachelor named Stewart (Sam Neill), who has arranged to marry her. "I have not spoken since I was 6 years old," Ada's voice tells us on the soundtrack. "Nobody knows why, least of all myself. This is not the sound of my voice; it is the sound of my mind." Ada communicates with the world through her piano, and through sign language, which is interpreted by her daughter. Stewart and his laborers, local Maori tribesmen, take one look at the piano crate and decide it is too much trouble to carry inland to the house, and so it stays there, on the beach, in the wind and rain. It says something that Stewart cares so little for his new bride that he does not want her to have the piano she has brought all the way from Scotland - even though it is her means of communication. He does not mind quiet women, is one way he puts it.
Ebert, R. (1993). The Piano. Retrieved from https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-piano-1993
The Piano - SCSA Exam Extract
Chapman, J. (Producer). Campion. J. (1993). [Motion Picture]. The Piano. New Zealand: Jan Chapman Productions.
The Piano
Chapman, J. (Producer). Campion. J. (1993). [Motion Picture]. The Piano. New Zealand: Jan Chapman Productions.
The Piano Beach Scene
Murat Guroglu. (2014, June 8). The Piano Beach Scene - The Heart Asks Pleasure First. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/rfpHj1lC5Yk
How We Made: Michael Nyman and Jane Campion on The Piano
Michael Nyman Composer
Jane Campion called me while I was in the middle of watching Neighbours one lunchtime. We had never met, so I asked her "Why me?" She said she thought I was the one who could present a visual emotional world with the smallest number of notes in the shortest space. Then there was a slight pause and she said: "I don't want any of that Greenaway shit." She wanted a different style from the music I'd written for The Draughtsman's Contract, and the three other films I'd scored for Peter Greenaway in the 1980s.
Tims, A. (2012). How We Made: Michael Nyman and Jane Campion on the Piano. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/jul/30/how-we-made-the-piano
The Piano: A feminist classic? 25 years on it doesn’t look like it
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Brady, T. (2018). The Piano: A Feminist Classic? 25 years On It Doesn't lohttps://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/the-piano-a-feminist-classic-25-years-on-it-doesn-t-look-like-it-1.3527987
In the mid-19th century, Scottish woman Ada McGrath (Hunter) is sold by her father into marriage to a New Zealand frontiersman named Alisdair Stewart (Neill). Ada is mute but she expresses herself by playing the piano and through sign language, with her young daughter, Flora (Paquin), acting as translator.
