Okay for those of you who are wondering The Movie Boards has been around in a couple of different incarnations for 12 years (I could have sworn it was only 10 years) and this is the 3000th post. For this milestone I’ve decided to take a look at Australian Cinema. Specifically, Early Australian Cinema, for this post I watched three movies The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), The Sentimental Bloke (1919) and For the Term of his Natural Life (1927).
There are movies and television shows that have inspired children to do stupid things. According to the Australian National Film and Sound Archive there are reports that in May 1907, The Story of the Kelly Gang inspired 5 local children in the Victorian town of Ballarat to beak into a photographic studio to steal money, after which they bailed up a group of schoolchildren at gunpoint.
It should also be noted that in April of 1907 Victorian Chief Secretary banned the film from Benalla and Wangaratta due to the towns connections to the Kelly Gang. One of the more interesting aspects of film censorship in Australia was the Bushranger ban. Where on films being produced about Bushrangers came into effect around 1911-1912. The ban remained in effect until the early 40’s.
The Story of the Kelly Gang
Director Charles Tait
Score 6/6
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.
Even though The Story of the Kelly Gang had an original run-time of 60 minutes it should be noted that the entire version of the movie has not survived, the version that I got to watch was around 20 minutes long and the quality of the film although in a digital form is very deteriorated in places.
I found it to be a very odd experience to watch a silent movie, especially if the copy of the film did not have the accompanying music playing which was the case with The Story of the Kelly Gang and the first copy of The Sentimental Bloke I found online. I also found that the writing for the title cards, for all three of the movies that I watched seemed to be more melodramatic then if they where written now. In the beginning I had a vague idea of what was going on in the movie but considering that I did not know a lot about the History of the Kelly Gang I did find that I had no idea for a good five minutes of the movie until the Gang’s last stand. I can remember thinking that the movie really did not paint the gang in a favorable light, but it should be noted that scenes involving the police seemed to always have them shooting.
It is a little hard to critique an but one of the scenes that seemed to have acting that could be considered to be melodramatic was the scene where Steve and Dan shot each other.One of the gang’s actual suits (probably Joe Byrnes’) was supposedly used in the film.
If you’re interested in this kind of thing supposedly The Story of the Kelly Gang had a budget of between £400–£1,000 and at the box office, it ended up taking £25,000.
The Sentimental Bloke
Director Raymond Longford
Score 6/6
The film is based on C.J. Dennis’ 1915 Australian poem The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke.
The first version of this was from video tape distributed by the New South Wales Department of Education in the early 1980s which was an incomplete version of the film, I found a second version on a public domain movie website which as far as I can tell is a complete version of the movie which I watched to fill in some of the gaps surrounding the courtship between Bill, the Bloke portrayed by Arthur Tauchert (it turns out that Tauchert was cast as Warden Troke in For the Term of his Natural Life) and Doreen portrayed by Lottie Lyell.
As far as I can the title cards for The Sentimental Bloke seem to be different from the title card from other silent movies, they are written in C.J. Dennis’ style of verse. Now if we take the time to overthink things just a little bit, we can guess that considering Dennis is cast in the movie as himself and he is seen at the beginning at a writing desk I assume that the entire movie takes place in Dennis’ head as he is writing The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke.
There was an interesting technique used by the filmmakers to show that a lovestruck Bill was thinking about Doreen by superimposing her face on to what he was looking at. Another interesting thing that I noticed about all three movies I watched was on the title card when they introduced a new character, they also told you who actor was.
I loved the Australianization of the title cards when Bill take Doreen on a date to see Romeo and Juliet. I found myself snickering at the awkwardness of Bill dressed up in a suit about to meet Doreen’s mother and the look on Bill’s face towards the end of the movie when Doreen gives birth to their baby boy is really heartwarming.
For the Term of his Natural Life
Director Norman Dawn
Score 6/6
At a time when an Australian film could easily be made for £1,000, For the Term of his Natural Life cost £50,000 making it the most expensive Australian silent film ever made.
This movie was adapted from the 1874 novel For the Term of His Natural Life, written by English-born Australian novelist Marcus Clarke. I do believe that this is the first silent movie that I have watched for The Movie Boards.
As you would expect the picture quality of the film is deteriorated in places, I also noticed that with the copy of the movie that I watched some of the footage from the third act was missing and photos where used as placeholders. My overall impression of the plot of For the Term of Natural Life that the major plot points would probably make for an interesting story arc on a soap opera especially with all the overacting. There is the scandal of an illegitimate child, somebody who is wrongfully convicted, a young woman lost part of her memory, the same young woman marrying a man who isn’t all that he is cracked up to be, revenge and impersonating somebody’s long lost son (which is wrapped up in a just deserts kind of way). I also loved the ambiguous nature of the ending.
Thank you Everybody.