This silent movie, an adaptation of a rip-snorting Australian novel from the 19th century, is a tough film to evaluate, because so much of it is missing, and that makes the exceptionally complicated plot very hard to follow. The story itself is a series of prisoner escapes and harsh sea voyages, linked together by a plot that relies on A Shameful Secret, A Noble Sacrifice, characters who Look Exactly Alike, and that favorite through the centuries, Amnesia. The book from which all this comes is a genuine page turner (with one of the scariest sea trips in literature) and well worth seeking out. But I don't see how anyone can even begin to follow this movie without either having read the book or at least having seen the miniseries.
If you do attempt this film, be prepared to do a lot of reading, as gaps in the plot are filled in by title cards, and some lengthy breaks in the action, where the lost bits of the film are represented by stills. This makes it tough to evaluate all the performances. There are some fairly good set pieces in the film, but, since the actual film goes missing in some real inconvenient spots, there is a lot of frustration involved with watching this.
Note that this reconstruction of the movie was attempted in the late 70s and early 80s, with the participation of the original director (who apparently directed from an annotated copy of the book, rather than a script) and is a true labor of love. This was truly Australia's most expensive silent movie. But it is only an approximation of what viewers saw in the 20s, and is mostly of historic interest. Maybe somebody will find a better copy of the film in their attic one of these days...
