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NEDATtony Richardson’s long-' awaited saga Ned Kelly (Century, Sydney; other mainland capitals earli.er; Hobart and Newcastle later), opens almost on a note of portentous disaster.Straight after the credits, the words The End flash across the screen. They Introduce a stark and admittedly very effective black - and - white sequence In pentrldge Oaol with Ned plunging to his gallows death after uttering his famous epitaph Such is life, but It's all very disconcerting and even melodramatic and the audience when I saw It reacted predictably.Then, come the words “The Beginning, and we're taken back to young Ned on his dewy-eyed way home after a stint In quod (or horse - stealing, wandering through the bush In glorious technicolor In a long scene vaguely derivative of Polonski's Tell Them Willie B.oy Was Here and rhapsodising to himself on the beauties o( stock-footage rosellas, kangaroos and even emus. It looks as If It's going to be as embarrassingly Australian as a gum-leaf or an Ampol commercial.AuthenticityFortunately, the film falls to live up to Its early promise. Richardson and co-scrlptwrlter Ian Jones have obviously done a decent darg of research, and Richardson himself as director has resisted the temptation to fix It in a dead-heart Burke-and-Wllls setting for the benefit of overseas audiences (and box-office): his moist, mist-wrapped Braldwood locations breathe a remarkable air of the Wombat Ranges authenticity and It's filmed throughout with a rare sometimes startling visual beauty.Many of the Important but little known elements of the Kelly myth (and In a story of the dimensions of the Kellys it's well-nigh impossible to draw the line between legend and hard fact) ar e brought to light and Indeed deliberately accented—particularly Ned's desperate atempt to get from the besieged Inn at Glenrowan to the little army of his supporters waiting for his word to rise.Richardson’s Ned Is the classic folk-hcro, persecuted by the Establishment's police, primitively articulating the Inchoate protest of the cockles against the depredations of the squatters, bound by ties of blood and shared experience to the peasant community from which he sprang.Rather than an Antipodean Robin Hood, he Is an Irlsh-Aust-rallan Wat Tyler, whose London Is the Glenrowan pub and the special police' train steaming up from Melbourne and who goes down fighting with a wild dream of a Republic of North-Eastern Vlv-toria in his heart.Despite all this, however, in many other respects the film Is little short of disappointing, falling uncomfortably between the stools of social-human document and outdoors adventure yarn.It's almost as if Richardson has lighted by chance on some of the essential aspects of the Kelly myth and yet been unable to round them into a satisfying artistic whole. The result Is a somewhat confused and Jerkily episodic mish-mash of styllsatlon and naturalism.Several individual sequences are excellently conceived and realised. The shooting of the four Police at Strlngybark Creek Is a beautiful piece of filming, captured In the rich sombre greens of a MacCubbin painting and following faithfully the accounts of the survivor McIntyre and of Ned himself, so, too, Is the wounding of Constable Fitzpatrick In the incident which touched off the Kelly uprising,But Richardson cannot resist ‘he temptation to fall ba«k onKELLY: A NEAR MISS THE IRON OUTLAWFilm review by ROBERT MELTONSend-up in several other scenes— effective in his earlier Charge of the Light Brigade but entirely discordant here.He treats the bank robbery at Euroa, for Instance, and the three-day seizure of Jerllderie as a couple of crazy boyish pranks In almost Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid style.Strangest of all Is his handling of Ned's capture at Glenrowan. Striving for filmic effect with an overdone shot of Ned, a grotesque Nolan-like monster in tln-can and cape, rising out of the dawn, he transports the outlaw from the scrub beside the hotel of history to the railway line, where he’s laid low by volley after volley from at least fifty policemen—a poor substitute for the terrified little knot of traps who thought he was the Bunyip and fired futilely at his breastplate until one brought him down from behind with a shot in the knee.Similarly, Richardson’s concentration on Ned robs the film of many opportunities for dramatic development and conflict, Ned is the only character we see In any real clarity: the rest are thrust into the obscure background.Of Joe Byrne. Ned's second in command, we learn comparatively nothing and his crucial conflict with the Informer Aaron Sherltt is unnecessarily blurred over.JoggerMick Jagger comes over surprisingly well as an actor, but unfortunately not as Ned. Richardson’s line throughout Is to show the Kellys as essentially young men rebelling against an alien and oppressive authority—obviously with a commendable eye to today's youth revolt.This works acceptably in the case of Byrne, Dan Kelly and Steve Hart—for as much as we see of them—but hardly with Ned. Jagger is simply too young to portray the leader of men who, as contemporary photographs show, possessed the physical maturity of a person of 40 today.Despite their limited opportunities, several members of the supporting cast give some of the best performances seen in any Australian film, and perhaps some of Richardson’s experience In the Big League has rubbed off on them.Martyn Sanderson, in particular. Is exoellent as Constable Fitzpatrick, the best defined of theminor roles, while Clarissa Kaye as Mrs Kelly and Alan Bickford as Dan are both Impressive. As Joe Byrne, the talented Mark McManus, through no fault of his own, Is reduced to a few boyish grins and some scant lines of nondescript dialogue.For all Its Inadequacies, NedMICK !AGGER'S NED KELLYKelly is perhaps the first film made In Australia to utilise, however BCrapplly. the new techniques of the modern cinema.The pity Is that it gets so near and yet so far from explaining Australian bushranging In artistic terms as a social and historical phenomenon which far transcendssheer Wild West banditry.With the Kelly story done to death, we'll most likely have to wait for some enterprising soul to tackle the Oardiner-GUbert-Hall outbreak on the Lachlan-slde In the 1860s before bush-ranging gets the sort of treatment It deserves.
Newspaper Details
Sydney Tribune
Sydney, New South Wales, AU
Wed, Nov 25, 1970
Page 10
Full Page
Clipped by
San A.
TX, USA 01 Aug 2023
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