Charles Tait - The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906)

The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906)

Australia/Silent/B&W

Directed by Charles Tait

Cast: 

Elizabeth Tait...Kate Kelly

John Tait...School Master

Rest of cast listed alphabetically:

Norman Campbell...Steve Hart

Bella Cola

Will Coyne...Joe Byrne

Sam Crewes...Dan Kelly

Jack Ennis...Steve Hart

John Forde...Dan Kelly

Vera Linden

Mr. Marshall...Dan Kelly

Mr. McKenzie...Steve Hart

Frank Mills...Ned Kelly

Ollie Wilson

E.J. Tait...Extra (uncredited)

Frank Tait...Extra (uncredited)

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.

Ned Kelly's actual suit of armour was borrowed from the Victorian Museum and worn in the film. Frank Mills was a Canadian who was a member of the Bland Holt touring company. He was clad in Ned Kelly's actual armour for the filming of the movie, and disappeared before it was finished. An extra had to complete the filming in long shots after Frank Mills left.

The first Australian film ever made, The Story of the Kelly Gang is a 1906 silent film that traces the exploits of 19th-century bushranger and outlaw Ned Kelly and his gang. It was the first dramatic film to run for more than 60 minutes. (Feature-length records of boxing matches predate it.) Directed by Charles Tait and shot in and around the city of Melbourne, the film ran for more than an hour with a reel length of about 1,200 metres (4,000 ft), making it the longest narrative film yet seen in the world. It was first shown at Melbourne's Athenaeum Hall on 26 December 1906 and premiered in the United Kingdom in January 1908. 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 legend.

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.

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…"

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.

The film was given a week of trial screenings in country towns in late 1906. This proved enormously successful and the movie already recouped its budget for these screenings alone.

Its Melbourne debut was made at the Athenaeum Hall on 26 December 1906. It ran for 5 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. 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:

" 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."

Many groups at the time, including some politicians and the police, interpreted the film as a glorification of criminality. The film was banned in "Kelly Country"—regional centres such as Benalla and Wangaratta—in April 1907, and in 1912 bushranger films were banned across Victoria, but 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. The backers and exhibitors made "a fortune" from the film, perhaps in excess of £25,000.

The film was considered lost until 1975, when five short segments totalling a few seconds of running time were found. In 1978 another 64 metres 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. 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. The restoration is now 17 minutes long and includes the key scene of Kelly's last stand.

In 2007, The Story of the Kelly Gang was inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register for being the world's first full-length narrative feature film.