Review: The Story of the Kelly Gang

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) hosted the Victorian premiere of the newly-restored 1906 film The Story of the Kelly Gang on Thursday night, with a crowd of screen culture luminaries (and at least one freeloading blogger) in attendance.

Introducing the night, ACMI director Tony Sweeney commented that while some people might think an evening at the tennis was the best way to kick off the Australia Day long weekend, for him, watching a classic Australian film such as that we were about to view struck him as eminently more appropriate.

I found myself nodding in agreement, because The Story of the Kelly Gang is more than just a landmark Australian film. Directed by theatre entrepreneur Charles Tait, it is widely regarded as the world’s first feature-length narrative film.

As recently as the 1970s The Story of the Kelly Gang was thought lost forever, but in recent years, scraps and fragments of the film have gradually emerged, including footage found on a Melbourne rubbish tip in 1980. More recently, almost an entire reel’s worth of footage, depicting the Kelly Gang's activities prior to the robbery of the Euroa bank, was discovered in 2006 in the offices of the National Film and Television Archive in the UK.

These surviving 17 minutes of the film, having been carefully restored to the point where they can now be screened, provide a fragmentary view of the film, from its opening scenes at the Kelly homestead through to the tragic climax at Glenrowan.

Originally an hour long when it premiered in Melbourne on Boxing Day 1906, the version screened tonight provides a more than adequate impression of what the full-length feature would have been like, despite nitrate-warping and missing scenes. Still, unless you’re prepared to wait around another 65 years to see the completed version of the film, as Paolo Cherchi Usai, the Director of the National Film and Sound Archive joked in his opening remarks, it’s probably the best version of The Story of the Kelly Gang we’re going to see for a while.

So what's it like?

As you'd expect, being a silent film the actors significantly over-emote (partially because the original film was shown without intertitles; naration was provided by an onstage lecturer who also acted as a foley artist, adding live sound effects such as gunshots and hoofbeats). The theatrical background of the director Charles Tait, coupled with the conventions of the day, ensure that the camera is primarily static, presenting the unfolding drama as if it were staged, with the majority of scenes displaying all the action in the foreground.

Nonetheless there are early signs of a developing cinematic language, such as a sequence in which a dying man is rescued from the burning Glenrowan Inn by a local priest. Shouldering the injured man, the priest walks straight at the camera, his figure filling the frame in a way that provides an immediate sense of drama, and which would not be out of place in a modern TV program.

Also look out for the scene showing Ned Kelly's last stand. As the actor playing Ned staggers forward, you'll see that the armour he wears is superbly acurate. That's because it really is armour worn by the gang - probably the suit worn by Ned's mate Joe Byrne.

Don't go in expecting to see a perfectly restored film, as there are some almost hallucinatory nitrate ripples which distort many final sequences - and which for me, actually added to the experience of watching the film, rather than destracting for it. Not everyone shared that view at tonight's screening, or course.

Nonetheless, The Story of the Kelly Gang was remarkable to watch. There were moments I felt a real emotional resonance with the events unfolding on the screen, and although the live electronic score by Endorphin was jarring for some, for me it successfully bridged past and present.

The two screenings on Australia Day, Friday 26th January, will feature a live, improvised score by the classically-trained Mauro Colombis, a renowned silent movie pianist.

The Story of the Kelly Gang is screening as part of a range of films at ACMI as part of the Australia Day celebrations: this page will tell you the details of some of the other films that are showing. I'm especially looking forward to a panel about the film and its place in Australia's early screen culture, in which the bushranger film was an important local genre before being banned as subversive in 1912. One of the speakers is academic and old friend Bill Routt, whose comments on the importance of the bushranger film you can read at the excellent website Senses of Cinema.

Look for a DVD of the film, featuring a range of extras including commentaries and both scores, to be released later this year.