The Story of the Kelly Gang
The Story of the Kelly Gang is a 1906 Australian Bushranger film directed by Charles Tait. It traces the exploits of 19th-century bushranger and outlaw Ned Kelly and his gang, with the film being shot in and around Melbourne. The original cut of this silent film 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. It 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 legend.
Poster for film's 1910 re-release
The Kelly gang inspects a reward notice for their capture.
The police descend on Glenrowan while Father Gibney protests the burning of the hotel.
Actor portraying Ned Kelly in an authentic suit of the Kelly gang's armour, which was loaned to the filmmakers and used in the film.
Australian Western, also known as meat pie Western or kangaroo Western, is a genre of Western-style films or TV series set in the Australian outback or "the bush". Films about bushrangers are included in this genre. Some films categorised as meat-pie or Australian Westerns also fulfil the criteria for other genres, such as drama, revisionist Western, crime or thriller. A sub-genre of the Australian Western, the Northern, has been coined by the makers of High Ground (2020), to describe a film set in the Northern Territory that accurately depicts historical events in a fictionalised form, that has aspects of a thriller.
The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), world's first full-length narrative feature film.