© The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia
"The Story of the Kelly Gang" - 1906: Ned Kelly shooting Fitzpatrick in the horse yard.

Detective work, technical progress and luck lie at the core of the restoration of The Story of the Kelly Gang, the world's first feature length film. With it, Australia recovers the earliest record of a myth dear to its heart and part of its collective memory.

With American film so dominant across the world, it may come as a surprise to some film enthusiasts to learn that the very first full length narrative feature film was in fact made by Australians.

Films depicting news events or domestic scenarios had been screened before awe-struck audiences from the late 1800’s on, but they were usually no longer than ten minutes in duration, taking up just one film reel. That all changed when an Australian family of theatrical entrepreneurs took it upon themselves to create an hour long narrative film, using five reels in total, heralding the beginning of what was to become the feature length film experience.

The Story of the Kelly Gang, inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2007, opened in Melbourne’s Athenaeum Hall on Boxing Day, December 26, 1906. It showed a fictionalised account of a real life bushranger, Ned Kelly, who had been caught and hanged just twenty five years earlier.

The exploits of Ned Kelly and his band of thieves captured the imagination of Australians in Kelly’s lifetime and went on, after his death, to attain mythical status in the Australian psyche. Whatever violent acts they had committed, in a post colonial context the Kelly Gang were seen as anti-authoritarian heroes, standing up to corrupt cops and defending the honour of women. The iconic image of Kelly’s last stand at The Glenrowan Hotel, wearing a homemade suit of armour to protect him against police bullets, continues to stir emotion in a nation built upon the courage, conviction, and as some contend, forced criminality of exiled Irish convicts.

Film exhibitor Charles Tait tapped into a universal fascination with this story and went on to write, direct, and with his brothers John and Nevin, produce and distribute an hour-long version of it. They were aided by other family members on acting duty, along with fellow exhibitors Millard Johnson and William Gibson as co-producers, technical advisors and camera operators. The Story of the Kelly Gang entertained audiences across Australia for weeks, and a year later, played to packed houses in New Zealand, Britain and Ireland.

Screenings took place in most Australian cities simultaneously, suggesting that at least half a dozen prints had been made. So controversial was the subject matter that the film was immediately banned in the Victorian towns in which the Kelly gang operated. Years later a state wide ban was imposed, and by the 1930’s all films with a bushranging theme were banned across Australia. The world’s first feature length film led directly to the first ever case of censorship!

The Story of the Kelly Gang was not only unique for its running time; it also evidenced a very sophisticated use of cinematography. Scenes would often run for up to ten minutes, framing the action in a theatrical manner in mid- to long shot, and establishing the conventions that would lay the groundwork for what was to become cinema’s most enduring genre – the western.

Despite its popularity, and due mainly to the limitations of highly perishable easily flammable film stock, The Story of the Kelly Gang all but disappeared by the mid forties. Other versions of the story had been made, some of which created confusion amongst historians as to the authenticity of the original. But by the mid seventies, fragments of the Tait brother’s 1906 masterpiece began to turn up, sometimes in the most unlikely places.

A tiny strip was found in Adelaide, another in Melbourne, most likely remnants left by local exhibitors, some of whom would re-arrange scenes, insert their own inter-titles or even ad scenes from out-takes. In 1982 someone hand delivered a long but severely damaged sequence to the offices of a film industry magazine after finding it at a garbage dump. But by far the biggest breakthrough came in 2006 when a whole reel in near perfect condition was located at the National Film and TV Archive in the United Kingdom.

These snippets, together with archived copies of the original programme brochure, helped Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive reconstruct The Story of the Kelly Gang. Advances in digital restoration made by Haghefilm Laboratories in Amsterdam meant that recovered footage could be remastered, damage to individual frames caused by dust and dirt was cleaned up and missing frames were replicated where necessary, by borrowing from those that did exist. Even so, only 17 minutes remain of the original film, with some key scenes chemically burnt almost beyond recognition.

The value of the well maintained programme brochures, posters, still photographs and press reviews from 1906 cannot be overstated – these archives have been as important as the discovery of film fragments in determining continuity, identifying characters and establishing narrative order.

A great deal of detective work lies at the core of this attempt to recover a record of a story that looms large in the Australian collective memory. This film depicting a key historical event is of immeasurable value to Australia’s cultural heritage. A century on, and the story of the Kelly Gang and its impact on Australian national identity is as vivid as ever.

By Jo Chichester, producer, Sunday Arts, ABC TV (Australia)

© The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia
The original programme brochure.

© The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia
DVD cover of the restored version of "The Story of the Kelly Gang."