The Kelly Gang

I just watched Charles Tait's The Story of the Kelly Gang, which I have discussed before as being the very first feature-length film made in the history of cinema. At 70 minutes the original film from 1906 was indeed the first long form film and was a full nine years before DW Griffith's pioneering (and extremely terrible by the way - have you seen that garbage?) The Birth of a Nation. Of course, all that's left is roughly 16 minutes worth of footage as the other three quarters of the film have either been lost or destroyed.


There are several sequences towards the end of the short remaining length that are clearly decomposing or what's known as nitrate damage due to the level of flammability in the original film stock (they retain the look of film being burnt on a projector), which is quite disappointing considering these marks are seen during the last stand of Ned Kelly and his outlaws, the scenes which feature the character of Ned in his famous helmet. These scenes are arguably the most fascinating and the ones of interest to most viewers, I imagine.


The film is, essentially, still easy to follow despite the plethora of missing scenes. Or, it is if you are familiar the story of Ned Kelly - a real life man who killed a bunch of policemen in the bush and robbed some others and then was hanged in the late 1880s. The study version found on the DVD, which expands upon the original 16 minutes of footage with the use of title cards like a traditional silent film is actually 30 minutes in total and is more easily followed with it's links and so forth between scenes and explaining the gaps.


It's disappointing that The Story of the Kelly Gang is never mentioned outside of Australian film discussion. This is the first feature-length film ever made yet because it's not American or French or whatever nobody even knows it exists for the most part. From what I can gather it was extremely wellmade for the times (remember: 1906). One bit I even found comical, when the bushranger Ned and his team hold up a household of people followed by the continual parade of passerbys. It's like "Why are there so many people going passed this house?"


One of the features of the DVD was you could listen to it without music, with a piano score or by Mauro Colombis or with an "experimental" musical score by Endorphin, which gives the film - strangely - a 1980s new wave soundtrack of sorts. The audio commentaries by Graham Shirley and Ian Christie are interesting if you like those sort of things (incredibly detailed history lessons).

All the images in this entry were screencaps that I took from the film to give you guys a look. You can view clips from the film over at Australian Screen Online.

Ned Screening

Late last year I discussed the very first feature film ever made and how it was actually an Australian movie about Ned Kelly entitled The Story of the Kelly Gang.

I opened my email today to find a letter from AFI saying that the film has been painstakingly restored by the National Film and Sound Archive and there will be a screening of the restored footage next week at ACMI in Melbourne (unsure about the rest of the country).

The Story of the Kelly Gang opened in Melbourne on Boxing Day 1906 and went on to thrill audiences across the country. Thanks to meticulous restoration work by the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA), nearly a quarter of this extraordinary film has now been pieced together and digitally restored by Haghefilm for contemporary and future generations.

Considering it was made 100 years ago and barely any of it had survived over the century, it's pretty amazing that we will actually be able to see it at all.

The existing parts of the film are to be released on DVD along with an educational guide and book. If you're at all interested in the history of the film medium then I'd suggest seeking it out. There is a screening, as I said, next week on May 17 at 6.30pm at ACMI including an introduction by those involved with the restoration. I'm not gonna be going, but if you live in Melbourne maybe you should. It's a complementary screening, after all.

All the details about booking tickets (you must book, don't just show up) can be found at Metro Magazine.

Happy 100th Birthday Cinema

I meant to do this the other day, but I got sidetracked by work and movies and social lives as you do. It may surprise some of y'all to know that Boxing Day 2006 was the 100th anniversary of feature length films. Uh-huh. I speak of Charles Tait's 1906 film The Story of The Kelly Gang. The world’s very first feature film was a 70-minute long production at a time when then French Lumiere brothers and others were pioneering cinema with titles like The Great Train Robbery and A Trip to the Moon that were under 15 minutes. The Story of The Kelly Gang, obviously a telling of the famous Ned Kelly story, had ten cast members, four of whom were from the director’s own family. Two of the film’s four producers were also Tait family members. The real Ned Kelly suit of armour was used on loan from the Melbourne Museum. It's budget was $2,250. It was initially banned in certain areas for glorifying these men, but it went on to screen around the nation for 20 years not only in Australia, but in New Zealand and Britain too. Ned Kelly was played by Godfrey Cass, who would go on to play Kelly again in another feature - 1920's The Kelly Gang. The film doesn't exist anymore, and all that's left of it are about 10 minutes of footage and several individual frames.


There's more about it at Wikipedia or the IMDb. I'd suggest going to the National Film & Sound Archive to look at all the restored film images, plus stuff like the promotional pictures below (which you can enlarge).