The Story of the Kelly Gang is a 1906 Australian bushranger film directed by Charles Tait. It traces the exploits of the 19th-century Kelly gang of bushrangers and outlaws, led by Ned Kelly. The silent film was shot in and around Melbourne and originally ran for more than an hour with a reel length of about 1,200 metres (4,000ft), making it the longest narrative film yet seen in the world.[6][7]
The film premiered at Melbourne's Athenaeum Hall on 26 December 1906 and was first shown in the United Kingdom in January 1908.[8][9] A commercial and critical success, it is regarded as the origin point of the bushranging drama, a genre that dominated the early years of Australian film production. Since its release, many other films have been made about the Kelly gang.
As of 2020, approximately 17 minutes of the film are known to have survived, which, together with stills and other fragments, have undergone restoration for theatrical and home video releases. In 2007, The Story of the Kelly Gang was inscribed on the UNESCOMemory of the World Register for being the world's first full-length narrative feature film.[10]
Plot
The Kelly gang inspects a reward notice for their capture.Dan Kelly cutting telegraph wiresThe police descend on Glenrowan as Father Gibney protests the burning of the hotel.Actor portraying Ned Kelly in an authentic suit of the Kelly gang's armour, which was loaned to the filmmakers and used in the film.Ned Kelly's capture
Film historian Ina Bertrand suggests that the tone of The Story of the Kelly Gang is "one of sorrow, depicting Ned Kelly and his gang as the last of the bushrangers." Bertrand identifies several scenes that suggest considerable film-making sophistication on the part of the Taits. One is the composition of a scene of police shooting parrots in the bush. The second is the capture of Ned, shot from the viewpoint of the police, as he advances.[11] A copy of the programme booklet has survived, containing a synopsis of the film, in six 'scenes'. The latter provided audiences with the sort of information later provided by intertitles, and can help historians imagine what the entire film may have been like.
According to the synopsis given in the surviving programme, the film originally comprised six sequences. These provided a loose narrative based on the Kelly gang story.[12][13][14]
Scene 1: Police discuss a warrant for Dan Kelly's arrest. Later, Kate Kelly rebuffs the attentions of a Trooper.
Scene 2: The killings of Kennedy, Scanlon and Lonigan at Stringybark Creek by the gang.
Scene 3: The hold-up at Younghusband's station and a bank hold–up.
Scene 4: Various gang members and supporters evade the police and the gang killing of Aaron Sherritt.
Scene 5: The attempt to derail a train and scenes at the Glenrowan Inn. The police surround the hotel, Dan Kelly and Steve Hart "die by each other's hands" after Joe Byrne is shot dead.
Scene 6: The closing scenes. Ned Kelly fights hard but is shot in the legs. "He begs the Troopers to spare his life, thus falls the last of the Kelly Gang…"
Alternative film
Some confusion regarding the plot has emerged as a result of a variant poster dating from the time the film was re-released in 1910. The similar (but different) photos suggest that either the film was being added to for its re-release, or an entirely new version was made by Johnson and Gibson, as the poster proclaims. In addition, a film fragment (" the Perth fragment ") exists, showing Aaron Sherritt being shot in front of an obviously painted canvas flat. This is now thought to be from a different film altogether, perhaps a cheap imitation of The Story of the Kelly Gang made by a theatrical company, keen to cash in on the success of the original, or an earlier bushranger short.[9]
Origins
Australian bushrangerNed Kelly had been executed only twenty-six years before The Story of the Kelly Gang was made, and Ned's mother Ellen and younger brother Jim were still alive at the time of its release. The film was made during an era when plays about bushrangers were extremely popular, and there were, by one estimate, six contemporaneous theatre companies giving performances of the Kelly gang story.[6] Historian Ian Jones suggests bushranger stories still had an "indefinable appeal" for Australians in the early 20th century.[15]Stephen Vagg wrote that "bushranger films are their own, uniquely Australian genre, deriving from local history and literary tradition rather than simply copying American tropes... Kelly Gang... , was adapted from an Australian stage play, based on an Australian historical event, and featured many traditions and tropes that are grounded more in Australian than American literary traditions – miscarriage of justice, Protestant-Catholic sectarianism, class warfare, feisty "squatter’s daughters", etc."[16]
Cast
There is considerable uncertainty over who appeared in the film and a number of unsubstantiated claims have been made regarding participation. According to the Australian National Film and Sound Archive, the only actors positively identified are:
C.S. Marsdesh as "the man who let off the smoke bombs at the right moment"[19]
In her memoirs, Viola Tait claimed the part of Ned was played by a Canadian stunt actor, who deserted the project partway through.[17]
A 1944 article said the actors came from Cole's Dramatic Company. This article claims the Taits were not in the film.[20] However, another article the following year from the same publication confirms the Taits' involvement.[21]
Production
Shooting of the film reportedly involved a budget variously estimated between £400 (Gibson) and £1,000 (Tait) and took six months.[1][4] While it is now commonly accepted that the Taits' experienced older brother Charles directed the film, only ten years after it was made, pioneer Australian director W. J. Lincoln claimed it was actually "directed by Mr Sam Crews [sic], who... worked without a scenario, and pieced the story together as he went along."[22] Lincoln also claimed that "the principal characters were played by the promoters and their relatives, who certainly made no pretensions to any great histrionic talent."[22]
Viola Tait's memoirs, published in the early 1970s, identifies Charles as being chosen as director because of his theatrical experience. Her account confirmed that many of the extended Tait family and their friends appeared in scenes.[17]
Much of the film was shot at Charterisville, a property leased by Lizzie Tait's family as a dairy farm and artists' colony near Heidelberg, now a suburb of Melbourne.[17] Other scenes in the film may have been shot in the suburbs of St Kilda (indoor scenes), and possibly Eltham,[23]Greensborough, Mitcham, and Rosanna.[24] The Victoria Railways Department assisted by providing a train.[25]
Costumes were possibly borrowed from E. I. Cole's Bohemian Company, and members of the troupe may have also performed in the film. According to Viola Tait, Sir Rupert Clarke loaned the suit of Kelly armour his family then owned for use in the film.[citation needed][23]
The Story of the Kelly Gang was made by a consortium of two partnerships involved in theatre—entrepreneurs John Tait and Nevin Tait, and pioneering film exhibitors Millard Johnson and William Gibson. The Tait family owned the Melbourne Athenaeum Hall and part of their concert program often included short films. Melbourne film exhibitors Johnson and Gibson also had technical experience, including developing film stock. Credit for writing the film scenario is generally given to brothers Frank, John and sometimes Charles Tait. At a time when films were usually shorts of five to ten minutes duration, their inspiration for making a film of at least sixty minutes in length, and intended as a stand-alone feature, was undoubtedly based on the proven success of stage versions of the Kelly story.[26]
Film historians Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper have noted that at the time, the filmmakers were unaware of the historical importance of the film they were making, and only much later "poured forth their memories." Unfortunately, "with the passage of time and the desire to make a good story of it" they "created a maze of contradictory information."[4]
For example, in later years, William Gibson claimed that while touring through New Zealand showing the bio-pic Living London, he noticed the large audiences attracted to Charles McMahon's stage play The Kelly Gang. Film historian Eric Reade claimed the Taits themselves owned the stage rights to a Kelly play,[27] while actors Sam Crewes and John Forde later also claimed to have thought of the idea of a making a film of the Kelly Gang's exploits, inspired by the success of stage plays.[citation needed]
The film's Melbourne premiere took place at the Athenaeum.
The film was given a week of trial screenings in "Kelly Country" (north-eastern Victoria) in late 1906. This proved enormously successful and the movie recouped its budget for these screenings alone.[3]
Its Melbourne debut was made at the Athenaeum Hall on 26 December 1906. It ran for five weeks to full houses, local papers noting the extraordinary popularity of the film. Although the country screenings had been silent, when the film was screened in Melbourne it was accompanied by live sound effects, including blank cartridges as gunshots and coconut shells beaten together to simulate hoofbeats. At later screenings a lecturer would also narrate the action.[3] These additions were well received by the theatre critic for Melbourne Punch, who stated that they greatly enhance the film's realism. He went on to say:[29]
All the notable features of the story of the Kellys are reproduced, and with the dialogue make up a sensational and realistic series dealing with the murders, robberies and misdeeds which are not the air-created fancies of a penny-dreadful writer, but actual facts which are well within the memory of our citizens.
Comparing the film to other artistic depictions of the Kelly saga, one Adelaide critic wrote that it conveys "a far more vivid impression of the actual life and deeds of the Kellys than letterpress and stagecraft combined."[30]
Many groups at the time, including some politicians and the police, interpreted the film as a glorification of criminality. Scenes depicting the gang's chivalrous conduct towards women received criticism, with The Bulletin stating that such a portrayal "justifies all Ned Kelly’s viciousness and villainies".[31] The film was banned in "Kelly Country"—regional centres such as Benalla and Wangaratta—in April 1907,[32] and in 1912 bushranger films were banned across New South Wales and Victoria.[33]
Despite the bans, the film toured Australia for over 20 years and was also shown in New Zealand, Ireland and Britain. When Queen's Royal Theatre was rebuilt in Dublin in 1909, it opened with a program headed by The Story of the Kelly Gang.[34] The backers and exhibitors made "a fortune" from the film, perhaps in excess of £25,000.[24]
Restoration
The Story of the Kelly Gang (fragment).
The film was considered completely lost until 1976, when five short segments totalling a few seconds of running time were found. In 1978, another 64 metres (210ft) of the film was discovered in a collection belonging to a former film exhibitor. In 1980, further footage was found at a rubbish dump. The longest surviving single sequence, the scene at Younghusband's station, was found in the UK in 2006.[35] In November 2006, the National Film and Sound Archive released a new digital restoration which incorporated the new material and recreated some scenes based on existing still photographs.
In director Warwick Thornton's 2017 film Sweet Country, a "travelling picture show" in 1920s Northern Territory shows The Story of the Kelly Gang to residents of an outback town, who cheer for the bushranger. The film's protagonist, an Aboriginal outlaw, is also named Kelly, but vilified and hunted by the same townspeople. According to The Australian, Thornton, an Aboriginal, "has little time" for depictions of Ned Kelly as a larrikin folk hero and Irish victim of British colonisation. "When there was a raiding party," said Thornton, "and a massacre happened, the Scottish, the Irish and the British were all shooting us. It doesn’t equate for me".[37]
Bushrangers were armed robbers and outlaws who resided in the Australian bush between the 1780s and the early 20th century. The original use of the term dates back to the early years of the British colonisation of Australia, and applied to transported convicts who had escaped into the bush to hide from the authorities. By the 1820s, the term had evolved to refer to those who took up "robbery under arms" as a way of life, using the bush as their base.
The cinema of Australia began with the 1906 production of The Story of the Kelly Gang, arguably the world's first feature film. Since then, Australian crews have produced many films, a number of which have received international recognition. Many actors and filmmakers with international reputations started their careers in Australian films, and many of these have established lucrative careers in larger film-producing centres such as the United States.
Thunderbolt is a 1910 Australian feature film based on the life of the bushranger Captain Thunderbolt. It was the directorial debut of John Gavin who later claimed it was the first "four-reel movie" made in Australia. It has also been called the first film made in New South Wales.
Edward Kelly was an Australian bushranger, outlaw, gang leader and convicted police-murderer. One of the last bushrangers, he is known for wearing a suit of bulletproof armour during his final shootout with the police.
Ned Kelly is a 1970 British-Australian biographical bushranger film. It was the seventh Australian feature film version of the story of 19th-century Australian bushranger Ned Kelly, and is notable for being the first Kelly film to be shot in colour.
The Kelly Gang is an Australian feature-length film about the Australian bush ranger, Ned Kelly. The film was released in 1920, and is the second film to be based on the life of Ned Kelly, the first being The Story of the Kelly Gang, released in 1906.
Daniel Kelly was an Australian bushranger and outlaw. The son of an Irish convict, he was the younger brother of the bushranger Ned Kelly. In 1878, Dan and Ned killed three policemen at Stringybark Creek in northeast Victoria, near the present-day town of Tolmie, Victoria. With two friends, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart, the brothers formed the Kelly Gang, which robbed banks, took over whole towns, and terrorized the people of Victoria and New South Wales for two years. The Victorian police searched for them, locked up their friends and families, but could not find them. Dan Kelly died during the infamous siege of Glenrowan in June 1880.
Henry Johnson, better known by his alias Harry Power, was an Irish-born convict who became a bushranger in Australia. From 1869 to 1870, he was accompanied by a young Ned Kelly, who went on to become Australia's best known bushranger.
Charles Tait was an Australian concert, film and theatrical entrepreneur. His most notable achievement was as the director and writer of The Story of the Kelly Gang regarded as the world's first feature-length film. The film was first shown on 26 December 1906.
Moonlite is a 1910 Australian bushranger film about Captain Moonlite, played by John Gavin, who also directed for producer H.A. Forsyth. It was also known as Captain Moonlite and is considered a lost film.
When the Kellys Rode is a 1934 Australian film directed by Harry Southwell about Ned Kelly.
When the Kellys Were Out is a 1923 Australian feature-length film directed by Harry Southwell about Ned Kelly. Only part of the film survives today.
It Is Never Too Late to Mend is a 1911 Australian feature-length silent film written and directed by W. J. Lincoln.
The Mystery of the Hansom Cab is an Australian feature-length film directed by W. J. Lincoln based on the popular novel, which had also been adapted into a play. It was one of several films Lincoln made with the Tait family, who had produced The Story of the Kelly Gang.
Captain Midnight, the Bush King is a 1911 Australian silent Western film about the fictitious bushranger Captain Midnight. It was the directorial debut of actor Alfred Rolfe. The film is based on the play of same name by W. J. Lincoln and Alfred Dampier. Captain Midnight, the Bush King is now considered lost.
Australian Western, also known as meat pie Western or kangaroo Western, is a genre of Western-style films or TV series set in the Australian outback or "the bush". Films about bushrangers are included in this genre. Some films categorised as meat-pie or Australian Westerns also fulfil the criteria for other genres, such as drama, revisionist Western, crime or thriller. A sub-genre of the Australian Western, the Northern, has been coined by the makers of High Ground (2020), to describe a film set in the Northern Territory that accurately depicts historical events in a fictionalised form, that has aspects of a thriller.
William Alfred Gibson was an Australian film producer and exhibitor best known for his collaboration with Millard Johnson. He was one of the producers of The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) and helped establish Amalgamated Pictures.
The bushranger ban was a ban on films about bushrangers that came into effect in parts of Australia in 1911–12. Films about bushrangers had been the most popular genre of local films ever since The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906). Governments were worried about the influence this would have on the population and bans against films depicting bushrangers were introduced in South Australia (1911), New South Wales and Victoria (1912).
Robbery Under Arms is a 1907 Australian film based on the popular 1888 novel. It was from the team of John and Nevin Tait and Millard Johnson and William Gibson, who had just made The Story of the Kelly Gang. It is considered a lost film.
In 1879, Australian bushranger and outlaw Ned Kelly devised a plan to create bulletproof armour and wear it during shootouts with the police. He and other members of the Kelly gang—Joe Byrne, Steve Hart, and brother Dan Kelly—had their own armour suits and helmets crafted from plough mouldboards, either donated by sympathisers or stolen from farms. The boards were heated and then beaten into shape over the course of four to five months, most likely in a crude bush forge and possibly with the assistance of blacksmiths. While the suits successfully repelled bullets, their heavy weight made them cumbersome to wear, and the gang debated their utility.
1 2 3 Graham Shirley and Brian Adams (1989), Australia Cinema: The First Eighty Years, Currency Press. Page 17-18. ISBN0868192325
1 2 3 Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper (1980), Australian Film 1900–1977: A Guide to Feature Film Production, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, pages 7-9. ISBN0 19 554213 4
1 2 3 4 Sally Jackson and Graham Shirley (2006), The Story of the Kelly Gang. National Film and Sound Archive, Australia "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 5 February 2013. Retrieved 9 January 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
↑ Ray Edmondson and Andrew Pike (1982) Australia's Lost Films. p. 13. National Library of Australia, Canberra. ISBN0-642-99251-7
↑ "THE KELLY GANG". The Argus. Melbourne. 27 December 1906. p.5. Retrieved 14 August 2015– via National Library of Australia.
1 2 Ina Bertrand and Ken Robb (1982) "The continuing saga of...The Story of the Kelly Gang." Cinema Papers, No. 36, February 1982, pp. 18–22
↑ A scan of a page from the programme can be seen at the blog Classic Australian Cinema: Australian films and actors from silents to the New Wave. Accessed 13 August 2015
↑ Ian Jones (1995) Ned Kelly; A short life. Thomas C. Lothian, Melbourne. p. 337. ISBN0 85091 631 3
↑ Vagg, Stephen (24 July 2019). "50 Meat Pie Westerns". Filmink.
1 2 3 4 Viola Tait (1971) A Family of Brothers. The Taits and J.C.Williamson; a Theatre History. Chapter 4. Heinemann Australia. ISBN0-85561-011-5. Viola was sister in law to Charles, John and Nevin Tait.
↑ "Stage Accidents". The Age. No.27020. Victoria, Australia. 22 November 1941. p.18. Retrieved 1 June 2017– via National Library of Australia.
↑ Australasian Radio Relay League. (7 October 1938), "The Man Who Made "THE KELLY GANG"", The Wireless Weekly: The Hundred per Cent Australian Radio Journal, 32 (15), Sydney: Wireless Press, retrieved 6 February 2024– via Trove
↑ Australian Broadcasting Commission. (10 March 1945), "Further footnotes on the Kelly Gang film", ABC Weekly, 7 (10), Sydney: ABC (published 1939), nla.obj-1324715413, retrieved 19 September 2023– via Trove
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