Trooper Campbell (1914)

Directed by

Raymond Longford

Genre

silent film

Country

Australia

Runtime

15 min

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A silent film from 1914 based on a poem by Henry Lawson. It shows visual images that accompany a live recital of the poem. The film was lost for decades before being rediscovered.

historicalstaticunpolishedmelodramaticexperimentalsilentobscure

What happens

Trooper Campbell is a 1914 film from director Raymond Longford based on a poem by Henry Lawson. The movie is one of Longford's more obscure works. There is some reference to it being made but none of it being released in cinemas. The movie consisted of visual images to accompany an in-person recital of the poem. It was considered a lost film but was discovered in the 1980s. Film writers Graham Shirley and Brian Adams stated that the film: Shows an advance on The Romantic Story of Margaret Catchpole, not so much in performance, which is still haunted by melodrama, as in the use of depth of field and positioning within the frame... [It] appears to have been hurriedly made (it was never listed among Longford's major achievements) and displays nowhere near the polish of Alfred Rolfe's The Hero of the Dardanelles, completed halfway through the next year. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• Taking his Chance (1914)
• The Day (1914)
• The Shepherd of the Southern Cross (1914)
• We'll Take Her Children in Amongst Our Own (1915)
• A Long, Long Way to Tipperary (1914)
• The Silence of Dean Maitland (1914)
• The Swagman's Story (1914)
• While the Billy Boils (1921)