The Story of the Kelly Gang
| The Story of the Kelly Gang | |
|---|---|
Poster for film's 1910 re-release | |
| Directed by | Charles Tait |
| Written by | Charles Tait John Tait |
| Based on | possibly the play The Kelly Gang by Arnold Denham |
| Produced by | William Gibson Millard Johnson John Tait Nevin Tait |
| Starring | Elizabeth Tait John Tait |
| Cinematography | Millard Johnson Orrie Perry Reg Perry |
| Distributed by | J & N Nevin Tait |
Release date |
|
Running time | 70 minutes |
| Country | Australia |
| Languages | Silent English intertitles |
| Budget | £400–£1,000 |
| Box office | £25,000 |
The Story of the Kelly Gang is a 1906 Australian 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 silent 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 yet seen in the world.
The film premiered at Melbourne's Athenaeum Hall on 26 December 1906 and was first shown in the United Kingdom in January 1908. A commercial and critical 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.