Logging in over 200 hours as a director on Australian TV during the 1970s on series including "Against the Wind" and "The Sullivans", Wincer made his feature directorial debut with the fairly derivative but competently crafted thriller "Snap Shot" (1979). He followed up with the genuinely offbeat if uneven tale of a Rasputin-like power, "Harlequin" (1980). His best known early film, though, was the acclaimed horse racing drama "Phar Lap" (1984), vividly documentarian in its style, if rather heavily sentimental in its narration. Wincer also did well producing the gripping, well-received
