Alvin Purple

The sex comedy that funded the entire Australian film revival, and one of the highest-grossing local films of its era. An ordinary young man is irresistible to women, and the film strings together his misadventures in the broad, ribald ocker style of the period. It is historically enormous and, to modern eyes, hard going.

Its importance is commercial rather than artistic: its success proved a domestic industry could make money, which paid for everything better that followed. It is a document of a very specific moment in Australian taste.

Watch it for the history, not the laughs.