Gallipoli (1981 film) Gallipoli (1981 film) Gallipoli is a 1981 Australian war drama film directed by Peter Weir and produced by Patricia Lovell and Robert Stigwood, starring Mel Gibson and Mark Lee, about several rural Western Australian young men who enlist in the Australian Army during the First World War. They are sent to the peninsula of Gallipoli in the Ottoman Empire (in modern-day Turkey), where they take part in the Gallipoli Campaign. During the course of the movie, the young men slowly lose their innocence about the purpose of war. The climax of the movie occurs on the Anzac battlefield at Gallipoli
Gallipoli (1981 film) and events that soldiers endured in the Gallipoli theatre of war. Archy Hamilton's athlete character was inspired by a line from Charles Bean's "Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918", describing Private Wilfred Harper of the 10th Light Horse during the attack at the Nek: ""Wilfred... was last seen running forward like a schoolboy in a foot-race, with all the speed he could compass."" The most notable deviation of the film from reality, and the one for which it has been most criticized, is its portrayal of the chain of command at the Nek. Although he is seen