A self-confessed movie addict from childhood, Mora's cinema icons were the
Marx Brothers,
Jean Cocteau's surrealist films,
Alfred Hitchcock,
Buster Keaton (as director) and
Ernst Lubitsch's early films, as reflected in his first home movies.
Back Alley, now preserved at the
National Film & Sound Archive, was made in 1964 when he was 15. This was a parody of
West Side Story filmed in
Flinders Lane, Melbourne just behind his mother's studio in
Grosvenor Chambers at 9
Collins Street. The film features Mora, his brother William, and friends Peter Beilby and Sweeney Reed, son of
Joy Hester. His next film,
Dreams in a Grey Afternoon (1965) was made as a silent movie but was screened with music by artist
Asher Bilu. Shot on
8 mm and printed on
16 mm, the film features
stop-motion animation of sculptures by the Russian-Australian sculptor and painter
Danila Vassilieff, and includes rare footage of
Sunday and
John Reed. Mora's next project,
Man in a Film (1966), was a pastiche of
Federico Fellini's
8½ and was also influenced by his recent viewing of
The Beatles' ''
A Hard Day's Night. Like its predecessor, it was made as a silent film, shot on 8mm and blown up to 16mm, and again screened with music by Asher Bilu. Man in a Film'' starred Sweeney Reed and premiered at the Tolarno Galleries in early 1967.
Give It Up (1967), shot in
Fitzroy Street, Melbourne, again featured Reed, with Don Watson and Philippe's younger brother Tiriel. The film symbolised Australian response to the
Vietnam War by depicting a woman (played by Zara Bowman) being repeatedly kicked and beaten in the gutter of a busy street while onlookers do nothing.
Exhibitions In late 1967, when he had finished school, Mora travelled to England. He was invited, with his partner
Freya Matthews, by Australian artist
Martin Sharp into "
The Pheasantry", a historic building in
King's Road,
Chelsea, London which housed studios and a nightclub. This residence inspired the name of his production company, Pheasantry Films. As "Von Mora", during this time he contributed cartoons influenced by Dada, comic strip art, Francis Bacon, and Vincent Van Gogh to
Oz magazine and assisted co-editor Martin Sharp with its landmark "Magic Theatre" edition. In 2007, along with others associated with
Oz including
Germaine Greer, he was critical of the sensationalist depiction of the era in the movie
Hippie Hippie Shake, but recalled in 2008 that; "most of my creative roots are in London. This is where I took off, crashed and burned and took off again. Paraphrasing
Brendan Behan, on occasion, like many artists, I was a drinker with a painting problem." He also made his next short film,
Passion Play, shot in the Pheasantry ca. 1967-1968 and featuring
Jenny Kee as Mary Magdalene, Michael Ramsden as Jesus, and Mora himself as the Devil. Mora began painting as soon as he arrived in London, and his first London exhibitions "Anti-Social Realism" and "Vomart," were held, at her invitation, in 1968 and 1969 at the Kings Road gallery of
Clytie Jessop, and garnered excellent reviews., though the first, in the Daily Mail announcing that he used a special paint formula that kills flies, was evidently a satire written by the artist.
Film Trouble in Molopolis (1970), Mora's first feature-length film (the title a homage to
Fritz Lang's
Metropolis), Shot in
Robert Hughes' apartment and at the Pheasantry, the film features
Germaine Greer as a cabaret singer,
Jenny Kee as 'Shanghai Lil',
Laurence Hope as a gangster, Martin Sharp as a mime and
Richard Neville as a PR man. Tony Cahill from
The Easybeats collaborated with Jamie Boyd for the score before the film premiered at the
Paris Pullman Cinema in Chelsea, as an
Oz benefit. Introduced by
George Melly, star John Ivor Golding also made a memorable appearance at the premiere, defecating in the front row and then passing out in an alcoholic coma. Shown in May 1970 at the Festival of British independent Films in London, it was eventually screened in Australia at the
Adelaide Film Festival in 1980. At age 23, Mora directed
Swastika, a two-hour compilation selected from 250 hours of captured Nazi documentaries, anti-Semitic propaganda, the
Berlin Olympics including an interview with a polite
Jesse Owens, and sequences from
home movies made by
Eva Braun discovered in the United States Marine and Signal Corps files in
Washington by German-born
University of London academic and specialist in German film, Lutz Becker, who pointed out that it included the first piece of film ever to show Hitler, in Munich in 1919, and colour film of the
Storm Troopers' victory parade in Berlin, 1933, remarking that "Even the Nazis didn't know about the 1919 piece of film with Hitler in it." In the same year Mora became editor and American correspondent of the newly launched
Cinema Papers alongside Peter Beilby and
Scott Murray. In 1975 and newly married, Mora wrote and directed,
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?, a documentary about the 1930s
Depression consisting of a series of film clips from newsreels and photographs, Hollywood films reflecting historical events, and those about making movies as well as
outtakes,
trailers, and home movies. It was screened at the
Cannes Film Festival during 'Critics Week,' at which he announced that he had left Australia "because I wanted to get into films, and there was no industry here." about the bushranger
Daniel Morgan, which he also wrote and directed, explaining to Rita Erlich that while he was moving away from the documentary, in all films "one is telling a story, just using different means. Film is a narrative art." produced by
David Puttnam with A$175,666 investment and a A$8,500 loan from the Australian Film Corporation and private backers,
Mad Dog Morgan was the first Australian movie to get a 40-cinema release in the United States and worldwide rights purchased for A$300,000 (worth nearly A$2 million in 2021). Though reviewer Michael Rowberry considered its "bid for realism has led the director to overdo the blood," and that the "simplistic morality of the film which ultimately robs it of depth," it went on to receive the John Ford Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1976 as part of
US Bicentennial celebrations, and in 1977 Mora was nominated by the
Australian Film Institute for 'Best Director' for the film. raising hopes of an Australian film being produced in Hollywood, but abandoned after controversy over Higham's research; members of Flynn's family unsuccessfully sued the author and the book's publisher for libel. After making
The Beast Within, his first film in America, Mora's next project on one of his periodic returns to Australia in 1981, was the parodic superhero musical,
The Return of Captain Invincible, released in
Hoyts cinemas for Christmas 1982 by Seven Keys, and starring
Alan Arkin,
Christopher Lee, Kate Fitzpatrick and an all-star Australian cast, with songs by
The Rocky Horror Show creator
Richard O'Brien. When Mora fell out with producer Andrew Gaty following Gaty re-cutting the film, the Department of Home Affairs pulled its certification as an Australian film asserting that it was then a different film, prompting a February 1983 court case, which was still not settled in July. Mora's next productions were
A Breed Apart with
Rutger Hauer and
Kathleen Turner, the werewolf horror films
Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf and
Howling III, the latter shown at the
Melbourne Comedy Festival in 1991, and the political drama
Death of a Soldier, starring
James Coburn, which was based on the infamous Melbourne wartime
Eddie Leonski murder case. While in Australia to make the latter, Mora conducted a seminar in June 1985 at the Australian Screen Directors Association. Mora's next film used the plot of the book
Communion, by his old friend from his London days in the late 1960s, artist, author and broadcaster
Whitley Strieber. Released in 1989, and to video, the film starred
Christopher Walken and was based on Strieber's own alleged encounters with aliens. Film credits as director as well as occasional writer and actor during the 1990s included the horror spoof
Pterodactyl Woman from Beverly Hills (1994) with
Beverly D'Angelo,
Barry Humphries (in three roles),
Moon Unit Zappa and Philippe's children Georges and Madeleine;
Art Deco Detective (1994); and
Precious Find (1996), a sci-fi version of
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. For television, Mora directed
Mercenary II: Thick & Thin (1997), and the films
Back in Business (1997),
Snide and Prejudice (1998) and
Burning Down the House (1998).
When We Were Modern In the early 2000s, with a A$25,000 'general development' fund from the Australian Film Commission, Mora began work on a still-unfinished film project titled
When We Were Modern which in part touched on his own life and experience. The film's plot explores on the tangled relationships of the Heide inner circle – Sidney Nolan, Joy Hester, Albert Tucker and John and Sunday Reed. In the 1940s, after deserting from the army, Nolan took refuge at the Reed's famous house "Heide", and it was here that he made the first paintings in his now world-famous
Ned Kelly series. During this time, Nolan also conducted an open affair with Sunday Reed, but she refused to leave her husband and marry Nolan, so he subsequently married John's Reed's sister, Cynthia Hansen instead. The marriage eventually broke up, and when Cynthia committed suicide in 1976, her death sparked a bitter feud between Nolan and author
Patrick White, which lasted until the end of their lives. White excoriated Nolan for abandoning his first wife Elizabeth (who was a close friend of his) and for remarrying (to Mary Perceval) so soon after Cynthia's death. At the time of announcement, Mora had cast Australian actor
Clayton Watson (
The Matrix) to play Nolan, with Americans
Alec Baldwin as John Reed and
Jennifer Jason Leigh as Sunday Reed. During pre-production, Mora discovered previously unseen home movies of the Heide circle, including the only films of Joy Hester and the Mirka Café.
When We Were Modern was to have been dedicated to Sweeney Reed, who committed suicide in March 1979, aged 34. Sweeney was to have featured prominently as a character, and as a tribute to him, Mora reportedly planned to include some of the footage from
Back Alley under the closing credits. Mora labored on the project for several years but it was rejected by Australian film funding bodies. Since then, Mora has worked on several other features and documentaries, but in May 2012,
Deadline Hollywood reported that he was returning to the film, intended then to be an animated feature using a combination of hand puppets, stop motion and conventional animation, with the last act in 3D, supervised by 3D cinematographer Dave Gregory. The report also indicates that Clayton Watson will still portray Nolan, but will now perform the role as a voice actor. Interviewed for the report, Mora commented: "Personally I loved John and Sunday, and Sweeney Reed, their adopted son, was my best friend as a kid. My parents helped John and Sunday set up the
Museum of Modern Art of Australia. This Nolan-Reed ménage is an important story that must be told honestly, no holds barred. It's a great Australian epic of love and modernism. We are using puppets done in the style of the painters involved."
Later career In 2007, Mora obtained FBI files released under freedom of information laws. In them, he uncovered evidence of an elaborate plot by
Robert Kennedy to trick
Marilyn Monroe into suicide; the detailed three-page implicated her psychiatrist, publicist and housekeeper as well as her friend, the British-born Hollywood actor
Peter Lawford, who was married to Kennedy's sister,
Patricia. In the
Sydney Morning Herald Mora affirmed that the document, sent to the FBI on 19 October 1964, was genuine. Mora married Pamela Krause Mora, a producer and production designer who worked on a number of his films since the 1990s, and they have three children. == Reception and legacy ==