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The Ned Kelly Films
A Cultural History of Kelly History
By Stephen Gaunson Intellect Ltd
Copyright © 2013 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78320-164-8
CHAPTER 1
'Bandits on the margin of the margin': 1906-1951
The early films maintain the popular sentiment that Kelly's sympathisers were a round-up of the social outcast communities: the rural criminal classes, rebellious youths and his own clan. As Anton Blok writes: 'all outlaws and robbers required protection in order to operate and to survive at all. If they lacked protection, they remained lonely wolves to be quickly dispatched, and those who hunted them down were either the landlord's retainers, the police, or the peasants' (Blok 1974: 99). 'Lonely wolves' is a good way to describe cinema-Ned and his gang of armed robbers in the early films, for they receive no sympathy beyond their inner sanctum. This chapter will map through the production history of the early Kelly films (1906–1951). Although it seems more straightforward than, for instance, how the films negotiate and rework Kelly history, this production history is just as muddled. A clash of competing Kelly films, government intervention, inept scripting, poor casting, indecisive direction and insufficient budgets spawned a cycle of bad cinema, without any of the delicious fetishisations that bad cinema often features. By describing the films' cultural and social context, this chapter posits them as symptomatic of their cultural epoch.
However, it was not as if all bushranger films during this time were bad: during the same year that Southwell was producing The Kelly Gang (1919), Kenneth Brampton made the very competent Robbery Under Arms (Brampton 1920); four years after The Glenrowan Affair (1951), Cecil Holmes made the excellent Captain Thunderbolt (Holmes 1955). Why then are the Kelly films so uniformly bad? Addressing this question all the way back in 1980, Ina Bertrand had to concede, 'the complexities of the Kelly legend and its relation to issues of Australian identity make it a difficult subject' (Bertrand 1980: 17). It is no coincidence, therefore, that the best bushranger films, such as Mad Dog Morgan (Mora 1976) or Robbery Under Arms have not been about Ned Kelly.
The Story of the Kelly Gang
In the early films, cinema-Ned is emblematic of the classic Australian bushranger. Grubby, dusty and a rogue, in description of this Ned William D. Routt explained: 'spawned in poverty, defying the respectable, rough, unseemly and somewhat uncut. The principle of their selection has been, then, metaphorical – a resemblance of the unruly spirit, not the flesh' (Routt 2003b). While many critical commentators fetishize The Story of the Kelly Gang (Charles Tait 1906) for its historical significance as the world's first feature film, Jill Matthews argues that in 1906 it was 'subjected to considerable criticism for its lack of exact realism and for presenting the well-known story in the pure spirit of two-penny coloured melodrama' (Matthews 2005: 111). The early films' shoddy quality, and failure to stimulate on any intellectual or aesthetic level, however, does produce an appropriately negative impression of history-Kelly, enhanced further by the staging of his felonious exploits. Rather than frame cinema-Ned on the former of right/wrong-good/bad binaries, the early films are morally complex, because he is forever tempted to behave in a manner that even his own community of rogues and cattle duffers consider 'unjust'. These early films are cautionary tales about the perils of bushranging. As the leader of the Kelly Gang, he is a lone wolf fighting a lone battle: 'bandits on the margin of the margin' (Routt 2003a).
It is believed that The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) was the first long-film and feature-length film ever made. Its original length was said to be around 70 minutes, but sadly only 18 minutes of fragmented footage currently exists. It was not, however, the first Kelly moving picture for there was another produced earlier in 1906. All that remains of this 'other' film is one grainy scene, dubbed by Ina Bertrand as 'the Perth Fragment'. It features Aaron Sherritt betraying the gang. Believed to have been registered at the Proprietors of Copyright on 14 December 1906, Routt understands it to have been adapted from one of the stage plays: The Kelly Gang or the Career of Ned Kelly, the Ironclad Bushranger of Australia (1898) produced and written by Arnold Denham, or Hands Up! Or Ned Kelly and His Gang or The Iron-Clad Bushranger (1903) produced by E. I. Cole (Fotheringham 1987: 32; Routt 2003a).
Denham's play had inspired other vaudeville celebrating the subject of 'lawlessness' and probably he influenced Cole's own Kelly play (Irvin 1981: 82). Routt understands that 'it would not have been out of the question for Cole's company to have been touring with this production in Western Australia in 1906, just as it would not be out of the question for entrepreneur Dan Barry to have been in Western Australia with his "cold-blooded" Kelly revival the year before' (Routt 2003a). 'The Perth Fragment' was most likely titled 'The Kelly Gang' and was not a feature film. Routt summarises the gang from 'the Perth Fragment' to liken them to Denham's play: 'Vile fellows, not like heroes at all' (Routt 2003a). On the same evening as the Taits' Melbourne premiere, a film titled 'The Kelly Gang' premiered at the Hobart Town Hall. This may well have been another copy of the Taits' film, or just perhaps the film including 'the Perth Fragment' (Bertrand and Routt 2007: 36). Dan Barry and Robert Hollyford presented it. Adding further confusion were the Taits, who promoted their film as either 'The Story of the Kelly Gang' or 'The Kelly Gang'. Confirmation of this other film is found in a legal memorandum between legal associates Gavan, Duffy, King and King, who discuss their client – brother of Ned – James 'Jim's' desire to see the banning of the Tait brothers' Kelly film. He had earlier banned 'another' Kelly film produced in Western Australia (Gavan et al. 1906). Jim, paradoxically, had no problem exploiting Ned's name for his own financial gain: the night that his brother hanged, he appeared at the Apollo Hall, Melbourne with his sister Kate; flamboyantly they entered the stage on Ned's favourite white stallion.
The Tait family was certainly involved in the international exhibition of bushranging vaudeville prior to their film. In addition to holding the rights to the Kelly 'Flesh and Blood' Show (Reade 1970: 28), they toured David Burn's The Bushrangers around Britain (V. Tait 1971; Burn 1829). As Graham Shirley and Brian Adams note, 1904 saw the Taits make their first substantial move into film exhibition. Their Melbourne Town Hall programmes were generally divided between the entertainment of imported cinema newsreels and gramophone recordings – as performed by the opera soprano extraordinaire Nellie Melba (Shirley and Adams 1983: 16). Then from 29 March 1906, they had a very successful run with the documentary Living London (Reade 1970: 26). By the year's end they had filmed The Story of the Kelly Gang (Love 1984: 194). Their Kelly film was shot mostly at the estate of Mrs Charles Tait, in the scenic Melbourne suburb of Heidelberg. The nearby train station at Rosanna became the Glenrowan Station; the Victorian Railway's Commissioner provided a train and gangers to rip up the tracks. (A thorough appraisal of this film can be found in Bertrand and Routt's comprehensive monograph The Picture That Will Live Forever (Bertrand and Routt 2007).) Because of film deterioration, a complete synopsis is difficult. Filling in some missing content, however, is the programme booklet: sold for 6d (sixpence) at screening performances in 1906. As this film predated intertitles and sound, the programme booklet would have helped audience members follow the on-screen story as well as filling in some necessary backstory. Reducing the narrative to the outbreak's six key moments, the booklet includes: the Fitzpatrick shooting; Stringybark Creek; Younghusband's bail up/Euroa bank raid; killing of Aaron Sherritt; the Glenrowan siege; and arrest/death of Ned Kelly. These sequences have remained seminal to the cinematic narrativisation of the Kelly outbreak.
Its astonishing box-office records prove its popularity: playing for five weeks to capacity houses at the Athenaeum Hall in Melbourne, it soon moved to the spacious Town Hall. It further enjoyed successful tours across Australia, New Zealand and London. As boasted by the updated editions of the programme booklet: 'The whole series of pictures were taken by Messrs J. and N. Tait, of Melbourne and London, and have been shown by them throughout Australasia and also England with phenomenal success' (Tait and Tait 1906: 22). Gibson later alleged that the film had returned no less than £25 000 (Pike and Cooper 1980: 9). If true, this makes it (by percentage) one of the highest grossing Australian productions ever. Reducing its further profits, nevertheless, was the Victorian Chief Secretary's decision in April 1907 to ban any screening of the film in the Benalla region (Peacock 2006).
Another Story of the Kelly Gang
Circulating in 1910 were two entirely different films, both titled 'The Story of the Kelly Gang': one was a re-release of the Taits' 1906 film; the other was an entirely new production, directed by William Gibson and Millard Johnson who were the same producers responsible for the 1906 edition. Discussing this new 1910 film, Jack Cranston, whose great-grandfather John 'Jack' Cranston travelled with the film, maintains:
Contrary to many reports published over the years, following on from the success of the previous 1906 film, in 1910 Messrs, Johnson and Gibson produced a totally new film titled 'The Story of the Kelly Gang'. With a new script, and almost a totally new cast, Johnson and Gibson's production team set about producing a brand new film measuring about 6 000 feet in length.
(Cranston 2006: 151)
Comparing the stills that appear on the theatre posters from the 1906 and 1910 films show two entirely different productions. Furthermore, the 1910 poster makes no mention of the Taits: 'A biograph specially taken by Johnson and Gibson'.
One aspect consistent in both the 1906 and 1910 'The Story of the Kelly Gang' is the depiction of the bushrangers in the tradition of the American Wild West bad men. One promotional postcard from the 1910 Gibson film, for instance, features the gang firing their guns directly towards the camera lens (Figure 1.3); a direct homage to Porter's famous coda from The Great Train Robbery indeed. Standing in unison and firing towards the camera lens, their iniquitous manner and villainous gestures create an unsettling miasma of the 'Notorious Kelly Gang'.
Early western genre films had such an impact on the early Australian film practice, and drew such a boom trade for exhibitors, that some entrepreneurial types even produced their own 'Wild West' productions. E. I. Cole's Bohemian Dramatic Company, for instance, commissioned Frenchman Maurice Bertel during his 1909 visit to Australia to direct 13 one-reelers. Eric Reade describes them as 'all completely foreign in title and content to the country in which they were made' (Reade 1979: 10). In 1911, E. I. Cole produced the western genre film The Five of Hearts, or Buffalo Bill's Love Story (Cole 1911). With a cast entirely of Australians, the scenes, as explained by the intertitles, included 'the Indian Camp; Rose Tortured, Surrounded by Daggers, Rescued, Buffalo Bill at the Stake; The Indian Chief's Fight with Knives; and, Black Bill's Lair' (Pike and Cooper 1980: 27). Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper understand the Bohemian Dramatic Company to be 'renowned for their noisy and action-packed stage productions of tales from the American West, and Buffalo Bill' (Pike and Cooper 1980: 27). When the Australian state governments began to enforce censorship on bushranging films – from 1911 – many companies, and players, turned more readily to the production of western genre films in Australia and abroad.
The paradox of the censors banning Australian bushranger films was them being no more gratuitous than the American westerns, which were rarely stunted by public bans. The Australian Commonwealth Censorship Authority assigned the State Censorship Boards – operating in New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania – the right to censor pictures made in Australia. The aesthetic and moral 'quality' of local films was the censor's central concern. The term 'quality' is important here for the censors were determined to erode what they considered to be 'morally objectionable taste and aesthetic'. The commissioners, during the 1927 Royal Commission on the Moving Picture Industry, strongly endorsed the notion that Australian films must respect the British Empire, for Australians at the time identified themselves as British in subject and character. Ruth Megaw speaking about the imported popular culture to Australia during the 1920s argues: 'Many of the books by American authors which reached Australia also tended to come through English channels, usually in English editions, and thus to reflect the tastes of English publishing companies or the British reading public' (Megaw, 1968: 195). Kelly's anti-English sentiment was symptomatic of what the censor's felt must be eroded from the Australian cinema theatre.
Banning the bushranger
The bushranger ban certainly went further than just the Kelly films, but, the very subject of Ned Kelly only seemed to exacerbate the concern of bushrangers fetishising a life of outlawry – for there was no figure of the bushranging tradition more lionised than Kelly. Appearing much later than the 'golden days' of the bushranger epidemic of the 1850s, he would posthumously become the codified symbol of the classic Australian bushranger – helped of course by his helmet, a symbol to represent all bushrangers. Because of the cinema's profound impact, especially on minor and adolescent filmgoers, there was always a concern as to how Kelly was represented as a felonious binary to the police. Even before the bushranger ban, the Kelly films endured the most scrutiny: 25 years since his death, and still much worry for the rank and file.
The Royal Commission on the Moving Picture Industry (June 1927–February 1928) recommended for the states to relinquish their power to the Commonwealth; a decision that was ultimately rejected with concerns that such an agreement would shut the states out of future conversations concerning the industry's management. The phenomenon of the picture theatre had become a huge revenue earner for the states; and certainly, they did not want any policy that could impede this. Yet, despite the states avoiding the enactment of the legislation (Section 51 of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act), which would give the Commonwealth power to control the censorship of all Australian motion pictures, they needed to enact their own censorship control to appease pressure (from also the police and religious groups). As the 'official' report on the Commission stated:
There is considerable controversy upon the effect of the cinema upon the child, and your Commissioners have examined educationalists, psychologists, medical practitioners, police officers, and parents with a view to ascertain the effect and the extent of the power of the film upon juveniles.
(1928: 18)
The introduction of censorship in Australia, regardless of earlier bans (pertaining to certain films in certain regions), strongly dictated the representation of its subject. Because no concessions would be shown to films that vilified the police, it became necessary for the Kelly Gang to be the story's mongrel villains. As a result of censorship, state regulators would ban any film guilty of the following violations:
1. Blasphemous, indecent or obscene.
2. Likely to be injurious to morality or to encourage or incite crime.
3. Likely to be offensive to the public of any friendly nation.
4. Likely to be offensive to the British Empire.
5. Depicts any matter which is undesirable in the public interest.
(1928: 4)
Of most relevance to the censoring of bushranger films was Clause 4. Addressing the sensibilities of British filmgoers, the Australian government initiated a campaign to erode any representation that depicted Australia as a rogue nation. Yet, mindful that by 1911 the bushranger genre was accounting for more than 30 per cent of Australian productions, and fearing the financial ramifications of a destitute production industry, the censors would review each film, after completion, before deciding on whether to enforce a ban. As Routt grants, the censorship era, until its abolishment in the late 1940s, was a murky business indeed:
Even if you did all the authorities asked, you weren't guaranteed a positive decision. Established filmmaking companies were not interested in the risk. So the people who did make bushranger films during this period were often a little like bushrangers themselves. The genre attracted adventurers and people who didn't have much to lose.
(Routt 2003a)
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Ned Kelly Films by Stephen Gaunson. Copyright © 2013 Intellect Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd.
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