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.
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.
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.
[citation needed] Mora also held a show at the Sigi Krauss Gallery where Martin Sharp also exhibited, featuring pictures painted in black and white.
[18] In February 1971, Joseph Beuys and Erwin Heerich invited him to sign a "Call to Action" manifesto demanding the freeing of the German art market.
His next show was in 1970 at the Sigi Krauss Gallery featuring a life-size sculpture of a sitting man, Pork Chop Ballad, a metaphor for the war in Vietnam.
[19]Trouble in Molopolis (1970), Mora's first feature-length film (the title a homage to Fritz Lang's Metropolis),[6] was financed by the partnership of Arthur Boyd and Eric Clapton.
[20] 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.
[45] 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,[46] and the political drama Death of a Soldier, starring James Coburn, which was based on the infamous Melbourne wartime Eddie Leonski murder case.
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.
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.
During pre-production, Mora discovered previously unseen home movies of the Heide circle, including the only films of Joy Hester and the Mirka Café.
In 1970, The Guardian's Derek Malcolm reviewing Trouble in Molopolis then being shown at The Other Cinema's 'festival of British independents,' describes it as "a Brechtian fable directed by Philippe Mora and set to on-off Weill-like music by Tony Cahill and others.
Good colour belies its cost (£6,000) and a sense of humour enlivens its serious purpose, which is to present a story of greed, stupidity and avarice in easily recognisable Marxist terms ... rough and at times amateurish ... it is distinctly original without being pretentious.
Though it was the official British entry at the Cannes Film Festival, Australian critic Pamela Ruskin excoriated Swastika in her review for lacking context, and thus 'whitewashing' Hitler.
[59] Micheal Billington in The Illustrated London News Obersalzburg considered a strength was its revealing "Hitler's manifest impatience when anyone else is talking and his inability to relax even in a domestic setting: he's as rigid as a tightly rolled umbrella, as carefully wound up as a mechanical toy.
"[65] Sandra Hall in The Bulletin declared it "a documentary meticulously constructed to give the flavor of a country and a period through its ceremonies, its personalities, its news stories and its culture,"[66] while English critic Alan Stanbrook regarded its view of the Depression "oversimplified.
"[67] In its subject country, America itself, Kevin Thomas praised the documentary's 'astonishing comprehensiveness' and emotional impact'[68] More ambivalent about melodramatic moments in Mad Dog Morgan in which "Mora loses control," Hall found it overall "a film that works hard and for the most part, effectively as a reminder of what is remarkable in Australian history.
"[69] Though, according to Filmnews, it opened to "damaging" reviews in New York,[70] Kay Keavney of the Australian Women's Weekly, in discussing Margaret Carnegie's research into the bushranger subject of Mad Dog Morgan, describes the film's creators as "arguably the world's most exciting young film-makers, Philippe Mora and Jeremy Thomas.
In this context Mora's three major works, Swastika, Brother Can You Spare Dime and Mad Dog have defined three aspects of insanity so concisely that they may be regarded as testaments for the 70s.
"[75] Reviewing Mora's 1994 Art Deco Detective, Cass Hampton declared unambiguously that "straightforward it definitely is not," but concluded that "there's a lot to chew on, and may be indigestible, but it has appeal: quirky dialogue, classy black comedy and dry, understated acting.