Ned Kelly

This film has always received a thorough trashing, in Australia at least, & having seen it, I believe unfairly. As a genre film it's pretty solid - boy gets out of jail, still gets hassled by The Man, gets pushed back into crime trying to help his dear old momma, & goes out in a blaze of glory (sort of - he was captured & hanged after the glorious showdown).

Unfortunately, the boy happens to be Ned Kelly, Australia's most ambiguous hero. Debating what sort of a man Kelly really was is irrelevant now - the legend is far more important. An Irish renegade standing up to the imperialist forces, or a glorified criminal, blah, blah, blah. He may have been a horse-thief, he may have been a thug, he may have loved fluffy kittens - we'll never know for sure.

This film hardly attempts to get at any sort of historical truth - it's about rebellious youth breaking free from the stuffy establishment, hence the casting of Jagger. He's actually quite good, but his celebrity overshadows his performance. He might have worked, just not playing such a famous Australian icon. That elevates it to a type of ironic blasphemy.

Pity, really - it's not a bad film at all. Well shot, directed & acted, it does convey a sense of being back in the 19th century, & still manages to have that rebellious 60's/70's charm.

A much better (& far more brutal) Australian bushranger film is 'Mad Dog Morgan', starring Dennis Hopper, & his Irish accent is just a bit more convincing than Jagger's.

This potted history of the infamous Australian outlaw benefits tremendously from Gerry Fisher's frequently ravishing photography but is ultimately doomed by its paint by numbers screenplay and the star turn by Mick Jagger (who reportedly dismissed the film as a "load of s**t"). Frankly, a bearded Jagger speaking in a weak brogue reminded me more of Warwick Davis in the Leprechaun series than it did of a legendary Robin Hood style badman. Shel Silverstein's faux-folk songs haven't aged well either.

There's some confusion about Mick Jagger's accent - is he trying to sound Australian or Irish? Well, as the character Ned Kelly appears to have been born in Australia of Irish parents, who's to say what his accent sounded like? Probably pretty much like Cockney Mick puttin' on a brogue, actually. After all, the Australian accent is probably descended from Cockney and Irish.

And it's unfortunate that someone else is saying that there's a Neil Jordan directed version on the way, because actually it's Gregor Jordan. So there'll be no last-minute revelation that Ned was a woman, then... Phew!

Even today the character of Ned Kelly is seen by most Australians as more sinned against than sinning. It's a pity then that director Tony Richardson and male lead Mick Jagger couldn't be afforded the same latitude.

Contrary to some comments in this forum, this film was never a cult hit or even very popular at all in Australia. When I studied film criticism during the 'seventies, "Ned Kelly" was often held up as the prime example of just how bad a movie could be. This view is the orthodox one among Australians of generations old enough to have seen it. The trouble with this orthodoxy is that is simply not true.

Jagger gives a surprisingly strong performance given his physical limitations. The story features no glaring inaccuracies of the Kelly legend and the screenplay is very well structured and paced. Above all, the cinematography is simply superb. Some of the scenes, such as the shoot out at Stringybark Creek are highly arresting.

All right, Waylon Jennings singing Shel Silverstein songs is a little corny and intrusive but that's about my only criticism. I would be surprised if the 2002 version is any better.

This film has been criticised too harshly, because of Mick Jagger's lack of experience as an actor and it's failure to stick to verifiable facts. But treat it as the cinematic equivalent of a folk ballad and you'll have a good time with it. Just as you wouldn't hire an opera singer to sing a folk song, you don't need a professional actor to play the lead in a rough-and-ready entertainment about a rough-and-ready character. By the time one gets to the speeded up segment that accompanies Waylon Jenning's singing of Shel Silverstein's "Blame it on the Kelly's" it becomes clear this is not a film that is intended as a serious examination of history. Like the song "The Wild Colonial Boy" which Jagger sings in one of the more memorable scenes in the movie, this is popular entertainment to be enjoyed with a few beers. Taken as such it is very enjoyable, with catchy songs, evocative cinematography and Jagger being very much the lovable, charismatic rabble-rouser he was in real-life at the time. And what matters in a folk ballad is not the truth, but the legend.