The copy of this movie that I looked at was in poor shape. Neither was the use of still images to fill in missing sections particularly helpful; the long and rambling titles to explain settings and missing action made itvery slow.
It starts of with George Fisher, home from a long sea voyage, quarreling with his legal father. He's actually the son of another man. While he stalks away, his natural father is killed. Fisher is accused, adopts a pseudonym to keep his mother's name out of it, and is sent to Australia's penal colony, where he becomes acquainted with another man who looks exactly like him, also played by Fisher. There's also lovely Eva Novak, who is suffering from memory loss, brutal prison conditions, and Compton Coutts as a reverent with a dark secret.
We're dealing with melodrama here, based on Marcus Clarke's 1880s novel about the brutality of the penal system of fifty years earlier. This movie suffers from a frequent problem of film versions of well-loved novels: it has to show every scene from the book. The voyage to Australia, with a fire a mutiny and so forth could have been ut from the film, but people would have complained. In the decision's defense, this portion of the movie is well done, even though it adds just about nothing to the story. The film ran about 100 minutes, and at a claimed production cost of 60,000 pounds, it is well produced, if rather prolix. There are the remnants of some beautiful location shooting around the Wombeyan Caves and Batemans Bay in New South Wales. It just goes on too long and improbably to hold my attention.
