Dashing and daring: the McDonagh sisters

From the first cinema in France in 1895 to our modern streaming platforms, movies are a pivotal part of our world. In 1920s Sydney, there were three sisters who sought to capture hearts and leave their artistic mark on the local film scene. 

Australia has had quite a role to play in cinema’s development. We can even stake a claim in launching the Marvel series (do we want to?), as the first one, Iron Man, premiered in Sydney. But we showcased our cinematic strengths much earlier than that.

At the end of the 1800s, the film industry blossomed incredibly quickly across the world with ‘going to the pictures’ becoming a regular occasion. The first movie theatre opened in Australia within a year of the Lumiere Brothers inventing the experience. 

Paulette, Phyllis and Isabel McDonagh were in the thick of it. They loved the craft, the drama, the technology so much and worked so hard in their respective careers as director, producer and star.

Like we’ve seen our vernacular grow with the introduction of the internet (we now google things, open new windows and tabs, and some of us even still lol), the same happened when the movies flicked on and we went from theatre to screen.

It may be where screen’s dual, opposite meanings of both to show and to hide come from (you screen a movie, but you can also screen something from someone) as a new use for a screening (hiding) sheet suddenly appeared. 

‘Movie’, probably the most common word we use, is a contraction of ‘moving picture’. The word ‘cinema’ was coined by those famous Lumiere Brothers, when they took the Greek word for movement, kinema, and added it to ‘graphe’ (writing or recording). Photography means recording with light and so cinematography means recording with movement. 

The creation of film would have been so exciting. Photography was developed (pun intended), then it was realised that, if you could take the photos quickly enough and put them one after the other, the image would appear to move. Eadweard Muybridge wanted to study motion – there was an argument at the time of whether a horse lifted both its feet off the ground when it galloped. In 1878, using sequential photography (which involved a lot of electrical engineering and chemical innovation), he noted that they did.

Australia was not isolated from the wonders film could bring. In 1906, a camera was mounted atop a Sydney tram to show England what the southern colony looked like. 

The McDonagh sisters made four films: Those Who Love, 1926, The Far Paradise, 1928, The Cheaters, 1929, and Two Minutes Silence, 1932, as well as a few short documentaries for good measure. They made elegant films inspired by German expressionism about love defying class and parental approval. Despite the glamour, they were operating on small budgets. 

Historian Graham Shirley writes, “knowing exactly what coverage she wanted, Paulette divided each day into a series of shots that during post-production cameraman Jack Fletcher had only to join end to end, as distinct from other filmmakers who might shoot extensive alternative coverage, then decide the best editing afterwards.” Making editing costs much cheaper, but I imagine the preplanning would have taken ages.

I found film director and producer Rebecca Barry through the National Film and Sound Archive, who had used a clip from her student film on the sisters as one of their articles (specifically, this one). Rebecca has now put the full film up on Youtube for all to enjoy.

Rebecca marks the sisters as inspiration to her as a young filmmaker and later as she decided to create her own production company. As she says, if you can't see it, you can't be it. 

Rebecca has had a string of film successes, and tells many non-fiction narratives of women and girls, with I Am A Girl receiving four AACTA nominations. In 2025 her film, Mozart's Sister, won two AACTAs. But she brings it back to the McDonagh sisters:

“And I think that their chutzpah and their excitement about collaborating and joining forces really did inspire me and my business partner, Madeline, to go, yeah, let's give it a try it."  

Comedian on the episode, Freya Reviews, has also studied film, but the sisters were not part of the curriculum. Hearing her joy from discovering these women’s story is a bit special.

The Archive has many wonderful assets on the sisters and are leading the search for their films, as we don’t have a lot left of their work.

Films that old don’t have a tendency to hang around. Firstly, films would have been posted from cinema to cinema until Barry couldn’t remember John from Bingara’s last name in order to track down where the canister went after he moved on (I imagine). Second, who’s going to keep these items? We can’t keep everything and what is important now may not have been at the time. Thirdly, film was made of celluloid, which degraded quickly and was very combustible, due to its nitrocellulose content.

Australia’s – and the world’s – first feature-length film, The Story of the Ned Kelly Gang, survives in just 17 minutes of film. At lot less than the original hour-length drama. When I was at school, there was only about 5 minutes left to show, but in 2006 footage was discovered in the UK’s National Film and Television Archive. I am sure that reel of celluloid has got a story to tell of its own.

So we shouldn’t be surprised that not a lot of the McDonagh sister’s work still exists. But there is enough to get a sense of their style. 

The Cheaters was developed into a full talkie in 1931, but it’s the silent film which exists in the best condition, and was remastered by the National Film and Sound Archive. There’s the chance to see a glimpse of their work today, and relive the glory days of Australia’s silent film industry.