The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906)

When the world was showing 10-15min narrative movies in the silent era, Australia popped up in 1906 with the world’s first and longest narrative feature film at the time which, they say, ran for about an hour.  It was also, apparently, banned from screening in Benalla and Wangaratta VIC in 1907 and also in Adelaide in 1911 (I wonder why lol).  This is The Story of the Kelly Gang.

Sadly the majority of that footage has been lost forever however over a number of years small fragments have been recovered, restored and released on DVD by the National Film & Sound Archive (NFSA) in Australia.  About 15 minutes of restored footage is available to view with either a silent, piano or “experimental” soundtrack along with a commentary and there is the option to view the “Study” edition which runs for about 30 minutes that has intertitles and still images to give you an idea as to what is happening in the story.  I watched both the 15 and 30 minute versions with the piano soundtrack for the 15-minute part of the film and the commentary by Film Historian Ian Christie and Graham Shirley, the NFSA’s Senior Curator of Moving Image, for the 30-minute version which is really quite informative.

The recovered film we have essentially covers some of the Kelly Gang’s exploits and his last stand which is only about a quarter of the film’s original length however it gives us an idea as to where the film was heading.  It’s not hard to grasp that film was expensive so when they started rolling they kept rolling till that scene was done whether it be right or not so there doesn’t appear to have been various takes, just one and that will have to do.  In one scene a horse wanders off screen and you can tell some of the actors are not sure what they should do next but it wanders back on and they just continue.  Today that would be unacceptable however in those times it was a bit more acceptable no doubt due to expense.

Considering the film is about 110 years old what we have has been restored quite well (my scoring takes into account the age of the film) though there are sections which were just damaged beyond repair and it really shows.  There is a “before and after” sequence which shows how much work was done to restore the film and it is quite interesting.  

The DVD comes with the following special features:

• Reconstructed study version, providing background and curated context to the restored fragments with optional explanatory commentary
• Commentaries by leading film historian Ian Christie and NFSA’s Senior Curator of Moving Image, Graham Shirley
• Piano accompaniment by Mauro Colombis, from the Pordenone Silent Film Festival
• Experimental soundtrack by Endorphin
• ‘Before and After’ reel demonstrating the details of the restoration process
• Image Gallery

So the question I guess is do I recommend this?  To the average person, probably not.  For someone interested in movies and Australis’s involvement in film history, then yes.  You should be able to get the basic edition for about $20 or under on ebay though there is a collector edition available which includes a 208-page book (about A5 size) that speaks a lot about the film etc but that would be somewhat harder to get.  After I bought the DVD I saw a second-hand copy of the book going for $7 so I picked it up but for a general interest the DVD would suffice.  I think it’s really good to have this part of Australian history available on DVD for those interested and a big thanks to those at NFSA for putting all this together cause we were, after all, the first country in the world to have a 60 minute narrative movie.  Good on ya cobber!

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