The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906)

Directed by

William Gibson, Millard Johnson, Charles Tait

Genre

Western film, silent film, biographical film, Australian Western, bushranging film

Country

Australia

Runtime

1h 10m

Rating

5.2 of 10 from 42 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This film is about the real-life outlaw Ned Kelly and his gang of bushrangers in 19th century Australia. It shows their crimes and exploits as they evade the authorities.

historicepisodicpublic-domain feelsilent-erarough-hewnfactualoutlaw-tale

What happens

The Story of the Kelly Gang is a 1906 Australian silent bushranger film directed by Charles Tait. It traces the exploits of the 19th-century Kelly gang of bushrangers and outlaws, led by Ned Kelly. The film was shot in and around Melbourne and originally ran for more than an hour with a reel length of about 1,200 metres (4,000 ft), making it the longest narrative film ever made at the time. The film premiered at Melbourne's Athenaeum Hall on 26 December 1906 and was first shown in the United Kingdom in January 1908. A critical and commercial success, it is regarded as the origin point of the bushranging drama, a genre that dominated the early years of Australian film production. Since its release, many other films have been made about the Kelly gang. As of 2020, approximately 17 minutes of the film are known to have survived, which, together with stills and other fragments, have undergone restoration for theatrical and home video releases. 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. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• The Kelly Gang (1920)
• When the Kellys Were Out (1923)
• When the Kellys Rode (1934)
• Ned (2003)
• Ned Kelly (1970)
• Ned Kelly (1960)
• The Proposition (2005)
• Trooper O'Brien (1928)