Even before the negative of Wake in Fright was finally discovered by its editor, Tony Buckley, and digitally restored by Deluxe Laboratories and presented to the National Film and Sound Archive it had been famous. Crew on the 1970 split shoot—exteriors in Broken Hill, interiors in Sydney—claimed it was the best film they had ever worked on. “Never mind the short runs in Sydney and Melbourne in 1971,” they’d insist, “it was shown at Cannes and ran for six months in Paris.” And critics like David Stratton and Sandra Hall agreed. In 1983, when as part of my research for…