The Story of the Kelly Gang 1906 - Lost footage
The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906): A US release? | Bohemian vs. Budget 1897 | Dan Barry's Tasmanian version | Film, theatre, radio & TV | Johnson & Gibson 1906-12 | Lost footage | Ned Kelly & the Ogles | Ned Kelly Polski | Norman Campbell's account | Original film 1906 | Premiere season 1906-7 | The Tait family |
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| Police firing on Ned and Kate Kelly. Scene from The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906). Source: The Video Cellar, 2013. |
Contents
- Restoration
- New footage
- The Video Cellar
- Comparison 2006 vs. 2013
- Acknowledgements
- References
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1. Restoration
Australia's The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) is nothing less than the world's first full-length feature film. Produced and directed by Millard Johnson and W.A. Gibson, with the financial and production support of theatrical entrepreneurs J. & N. Tait, it premiered in the Australian capital cities of Melbourne, Adelaide and Hobart on Boxing Day, 26 November 1906. A "new version", with the same basic plot and newly shot footage, plus intertitles and some colourisation, was released by Johnson and Gibson four years later (The Herald, Melbourne, 13 June 1910).
Typical for films of the silent era, a complete print of The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) and any variants has not survived. Its unavailability was noted as early as the 1940s. During 1981 the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) undertook its first restoration of surviving footage, resulting in a compilation which ran for 13 minutes and 30 seconds at 16 fps. In 1993 a second restoration was carried out by the NFSA, this time with 650 feet of film, running for 9 minutes and 27 seconds at 16 fps. In 2006, after a world-wide search, the NFSA released a third restored version on DVD which included all the then-known extant footage. This ran for approximately 15 minutes. The original 1906 release was novel for the time as it was a "representation" of the life and times of the Kelly Gang, and it ran as a complete program for over an hour and a half.
That original director's cut of 1906 comprised five reels of 35mm black and white nitrate film. Each reel ran for 20 minutes when projected at the then standard rate of 16 frames per second. This was also the rate at which the original film was shot with hand-cranked cameras. With the addition of surviving stills and narrative inserts to aid in audience comprehension of the plot, the 2006 DVD version ran for approximately 21 minutes and was compiled based on access to not only the surviving footage but also archival print and manuscript records, such as a contemporary printed listing of scenes.
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| Original 2 page synopsis and scene description, December 1906. Source: NFSA Collection. |
It should be remembered that upon initial release during 1906-10, this "silent" film was, in many instances, and most commonly at big city venues, accompanied by (1) music; (2) sound effects, such as guns being shot; (3) vocal narration and/or dialogue by actors or technicians, either in front of or behind the screen; and (4) colourisation of the film in order to enhance its impact. The film was a financial success upon its Australian release. This was accompanied by overseas screenings in countries such as New Zealand and Great Britain.
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2. New footage
In July 2024 the present writer came across a version of the film on YouTube which contained approximately five minutes of footage not present in the 2006 NFSA restoration, including a number of original J & G intertitles possibly from the 1910 release. That video is presented below.
The Story of the Kelly Gang - Australian silent feature film movie, Dead on Arrival, YouTube, 12 May 2013, duration: 20.51 minutes. Source: The Video Cellar.
Posted on the Dead on Arrival YouTube channel on 12 May 2013, no information was provided as to the source of this video. The present writer subsequently tracked it down to the Internet Archive where the 426.2mb file had been uploaded on 29 March 2013 by the anonymous www.thevideocellar.com. A search of the similarly anonymous The Video Cellar blog site revealed a number of postings over the period 2014-18 and the following mission statement from presumed owner of the site:
We are one of the largest private vintage film archives. We have an eclectic collection of feature films, shorts, animations and TV shows. The collection contains all kinds of narrative, educational, documentary, advertising, instructional and government films and videos from all over the world. Many of the videos are digitally available for free through Internet Archive and YouTube. Our mission is to collect and preserve forgotten and lost films, to make them available to the public.
In regard to The Story of the Kelly Gang footage uploaded to the Internet Archive, the blog site stated:
An attempt to create a coherent narrative out of all surviving fragments of Australia's first feature length film. Sections from the final reel are heavily decomposed. Running at just over 20 minutes, this is possibly the longest available version.
We could glean from both of these quotes, that the owner of The Video Cellar had either personally produced, or obtained, a copy of this extended version of the film, and therefore likely had access to surviving footage that was not known to the National Film and Sound Archives of Australia research team, led by archivist Sally Jackson, which had compiled the 2006 DVD version.
Further research revealed the Lulu book publication database, which contained the following information about Australian Shane Ian Sullivan (b.1980), who was therein revealed to be the owner of The Video Cellar site:
This is "Shane's Book Cellar", the home of TVC Books, which is the publishing arm of The Video Cellar. Here, you will find a selection of classic novels and short story collections. Some of our titles are very rare. You probably won't find other publishers who carry these titles. We are also exclusive publishers for all the film guides, books and short story collections written and/or edited by The Video Cellar's founder Shane Sullivan. Shane Sullivan is an Australian film historian educated at the University of Newcastle and the University of Technology, Sydney. He has had a varied career as a teacher and as the manager of a business focused on film archiving, preservation and bringing vintage media to new media platforms.
Sullivan's Amazon profile reads as follows:
Shane Ian Sullivan is an Australian writer born in Gosford, New South Wales in 1980. Growing up, he immersed himself in the golden age of crime, detective and horror fiction and cinema. Educated at the University of Newcastle and the University of Technology, Sydney, Shane has studied Film, Literature, Classics, History, Archaeology, Linguistics, Education, and Digital Screen Education. He has a deep interest in Film as a socio-historical document and the digital preservation and access to vintage cinema entertainment. In addition to his writing, Shane has had a varied career as an English Literature and History teacher, a pioneer of the wide use of vintage media on new media platforms, an art museum host and a banker (but don't hold that against him). Currently living on the Central Coast of New South Wales, he is a keen collector of films and original Japanese ukiyo-e prints.
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4. Footage comparison 2006 vs. 2013
As noted above, The Video Cellar version of The Story of the Kelly Gang appears to have approximately five minutes of footage additional to the 2006 NFSA version. The source of this footage is unknown at the present time (August 2024). There is apparently additional footage in the NFSA collection which replicates some of the material in the 2006 edit - though not all - and was not used in that restoration as it was not identified as relating to the 1906 release or, like other known footage, was not necessarily identified as linked the The Story of the Kelly Gang. It is therefore possible that The Video Cellar had access to material in a private collection in Australia. Whatever the case, there now exist three sources of relevance to the film's restoration:
- Original presentation archival information, th ough primarily based on the published list of scenes mentioned above;
- The NFSA 2006 cut footage; and
- The Video Cellar 2013 cut footage.
At this stage, this is all that is available, pending the discovery of additional as yet unknown footage, either in private collections or overseas archival institutions. The following table therefore presents an outline of known scenes in the original film and notation regarding the available footage.
[Listing of scenes]
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5. Any more?
With the discover of an extra five minutes of footage, the question arises: has any more footage of the film survived. As noted above, there was a world-wide, though limited, search of film archives prior to the 2006 NFSA restoration. Whilst there was some success in locating footage in England, nothing else was found. If we considered the cinematic environment in Australia during 1906 we can see that, even then, footage was arriving in the country primarily from France, England and the United States. Yet no record has been located of the film being released in Europe or the United States. The latter is the most obvious and likely country that a copy of The Story of the Kelly Gang would have been sent, as it was even then a large market and the Taits, who at the time proclaimed world-wide copyright on the film would have been keen to break into it. What happened?
According to Australian film maker Philippe Mora, there is all likelihood that a copy did reach there, but the film was never publically released as such. At the time there was limited avenues for distribution, and such networks did not develop until the 1910s. Nevertheless, according to Mora, the film did reach America and was seen by select groups and fellow burgeoning film makers. As possible evidence of this he points to the 1912 two-reel film Custer's Last Fight, directed by Francis Ford (1881-1953), brother of the famous director John Ford. Mora suggests that the film has a similar "vibe" to The Story of the Kelly Gang and obviously replicates it in parts.
Custer's Last Fight, 1912, YouTube, duration: 42.46 minutes.
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5. Acknowledgements
In the compilation of this work I would like to acknowledge assistance from audio and visual film and sound archivist Ray Edmondson and Sally Jackson, both formerly of the National Film & Sound Archive of Australia.
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6. References
Bertrand, Ina and William D. Routt, 'The picture that will live forever': The Story of the Kelly Gang, Series: The Moving Image, number 8, Australian Teachers of Media, St. Kilda, 2007, 197p. [Included with the 2006 NFSA DVD release of The Story of the Kelly Gang.]
National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, The Story of the Kelly Gang, National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, Canberra, DVD + Booklet, 2007.
Shirley, Graham and Sally Jackson, The Story of the Kelly Gang - Restoring the World's First Feature, National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, Canberra, 2023.
Sullivan, Shane Ian, The Story of the Kelly Gang, Video-Cellar / The Video Cellar Collection, Internet Archive, 29 March 2013, duration: 20.51 minutes.
-----, The Video Cellar [blog], 2014-18, accessed 23 August 2024.
-----, About Shane Sullivan, Lulu [web database], accessed 23 August 2024.
-----, Shane Ian Sullivan, Amazon [publications database], accessed 23 August 2024.
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The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906): A US release? | Bohemian vs. Budget 1897 | Dan Barry's Tasmanian version | Film, theatre, radio & TV | Johnson & Gibson 1906-12 | Lost footage | Ned Kelly & the Ogles | Ned Kelly Polski | Norman Campbell's account | Original film 1906 | Premiere season 1906-7 | The Tait family |
Last updated: 23 August 2024
Michael Organ, Australia
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