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NED KELLY (1970)
MGM / SHOCK DVD (region 4)
d. Tony Richardson; pr. Neil Hartley; scr. Ian Jones, Tony Richardson; ph. Gerry Fisher; m. Shel Silverstein; ed. Charles Rees; cast. Mick Jagger, Clarissa Kaye-Mason, Mark McManus, Ken Goodlet, Frank Thring, Bruce Barry, Alan Bickford, Ken Shorter (99 mins)
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The British "Angry Young Man" School tackles Aussie folklore
The late 1960s and early 1970s were an interesting time for English cinema.
On the one hand there was the so-called “angry young man” school of British social realism and on the other there was the “swinging 60s” psychedelia and the cult of the rock star. Although the two forms seemed incompatible, they nevertheless intersected in some unusual ways. Strangely enough, it was Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger who departed from rock music to star in two provocative and tonally experimental films – seguing into the slyly amorphous personality transference exercise of Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell’s Performance and the offbeat Australian-set folktale of Ned Kelly. Whilst Performance went on to become one of the most celebrated of the counter-culture school, Ned Kelly sank rather undeservedly into obscurity. Certainly it is a film full of pizzazz and energy, as if the director, Tony Richardson, once noted for social realism, was intent on partially transplanting his recent worldwide success with the bawdy, irreverent Tom Jones into the Australian outback in a style to match the swinging era. The result is a curious international venture, less a portrait in legendary Australian outlawry than a rare generic hybrid and a brave attempt to forge a new style of cinematic folk ballad. To that end, it is an ambitious and most rewarding film, making even surprisingly good use of the non-actor Jagger.
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Synopsis (contains spoilers)
The film of Ned Kelly tells the story of the Australian bushranger, played by Mick Jagger as a kind of irresponsible, brash lout who slowly develops a grandiose self-image.
He is the son of a proud Irish Matriarch, courted by an American man of some means, who lauds over her staunchly Irish poverty-stricken clan. In a dispute over land and grazing cattle, they soon find themselves up against the resolutely British gentry and police force. Provoked and goaded into action, as they believe it, the defiant Kelly gang become horse thieves. Soon they are thus wanted men and must take to the bush as a police patrol is sent out after them. When a shootout occurs, the Kellys become to the English the epitome of anti-authoritarian defiance and are hounded relentlessly: the persecution extending to the Kelly Matriarch. Ned and his band obviously have fun with their crimes, with Ned especially believing himself the hero of the song he repeatedly sings – “Wild Colonial Boy” – and in the grip of apparently strong delusions of grandeur eventually believes that he will triumphantly lead his many fellows in a guerrilla type resistance against the British authority with the intent of turning the state of Victoria into a republic (a sly nod to the contemporary Irish / English conflict). He fashions a suit of protective armour for himself and his clan and sets out to derail a train, intent on killing as many police as possible.
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Ireland vs. England for the fate of the Wild Colonials
Director Tony Richardson is well aware of Ned Kelly’s status in Australia as more than an outlaw but rather a genuine anti-hero. The casting of Mick Jagger cannily turns the character into a contemporized, youthful icon and the film hence unfolds more in tones akin to a kind of tragic but picaresque folk tale.
Indeed, with folk music recurring throughout (though sung by American country and western singer Waylon Jennings strangely enough) the film intends to champion Kelly as a defiant spokesperson for the underprivileged working classes (mostly Irish in this context) forever under the yoke of British colonial imperialism. Thus, Ned Kelly is considered a hero not for his criminal acts but for the strong gesture of defiance that these acts represent against the British authority. Yet this is not merely a demonstration of an early proto-typical Australian move to nationalism (although it is symbolic of that self-determinist drive in the surrounding historical context) but a continuation in a foreign country of what the director considers the age-old Irish-British struggle. It is the Irish against the English for the future of the poverty-stricken in Australia. This allegorical clash is treated with energy and humour by Richardson, who always insists that Kelly represents a kind of “wild Australia”, an undisciplined land and people that the British would try to order and plunder as befits their typical sense of cultural superiority.
Though it is full of wonder for the natural landscape and the importance of this period in shaping Australian nationalism, Ned Kelly never loses sight of the character’s slide into a form of megalomania.
Unable to achieve his ambitions, Kelly was in a sense doomed by his very lack of discipline (and his trust of ordinary people). It is as a populist hero that Kelly attains his significance, finally leaving it to history to determine his guilt in context. But while director Richardson celebrates Kelly, he still emphasizes the man’s role in killing although leaves the degree of his responsibility in murder rather ambiguous. His motivations are initially more selfish and petty than benevolent or politically radical as indeed his change to the radical is a sign of his out of control ego, the act of a wanted man who thinks himself far more significant than he actually is and so pursues a form of self-aggrandizement in response. That is the essential irony for Richardson. One most telling remark comes from Ma Kelly’s American suitor who says that he comes from a land of the free, but soon departs, Australia apparently too much of a test for him to bear. Richardson implies that it is Kelly and his example that effectively turned Australia into a land of the free and so more like the US model than the British – hence the implied need for an Australian revolution and the film’s visually striking resemblance to an American western.
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Poverty & Hardship in a Rugged Land
The transfer, though 4:3 fullscreen only, does justice to a surprisingly inventive and even formally daring visual style.
It begins with the end, in a deliberately yellowing black and white and with flashy, discontinuous editing and yet emerges an American western in look and feel, with a gritty, grimy physicality akin to the so-called mud-and-rags school of that genre in the 1970s. Kelly is identified with the land as a kind of feral Australia that will not be oppressed despite the British authority. Richardson frequently uses a hand-held camera and stresses the notions of family and Irish unity as a means of combating the poverty and the hardship of the land. There are some beautiful shots in rain and fading sunlight but the film emphasizes the ruggedness of the land and the society that is beginning to take hold in pubs and towns: it depicts a culture and lifestyle in formation, guided by British authority (wherein the Irish traitor is the most despicable figure) and its associated moral codes. Earth tones dominate, as do the extremes of weather. Costume is used to reveal socio-economic standing and the scene where the Kelly gang mock the British is complete when they steal their ill-fitting clothes (done in speeded up motion). Visually, the film can be considered an Australian western made by an Englishman – a most peculiar hybrid but an influential one, as American Dennis Hopper would soon star as Mad Dog Morgan.
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Stylized Physicality & the Hallucinatory Voice of a Wild Colonial Boy
The Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo sound transfer is surprisingly delicate within its inherent limits.
Thankfully, what is preserved here without blemish is the use of folk songs sung by Waylon Jennings as both a running commentary on the film and an indication of just how the Kelly legend transformed into an edifying motif. These songs add a complex mournful quality as they imply the cultural legacy of the actions depicted. However, the sound transfer may feel flat and mono-centric. The clash of Irish and British (and American and even Australian) accents makes for a clever comment on the pressures existing on Australia as a nation in search of its own historical, economic and cultural identity. Tellingly, authority has an English accent, and defiance, an Irish one. Effective use is made of Jagger repeatedly singing “Wild Colonial Boy” as if he is inspired to become a legend through an already existing tradition of Australian outlawry as deliberate defiance. At times, Jagger’s voice is almost hallucinatory. The sounds of the natural landscape make for a constant and often vivid background to the unfolding action, emphasizing the physicality of the Australian bush. The final shootout is rendered with deliberate obscurity as it is heard via Kelly within his suit of armour and thus has a detached and muted quality, mixed with his breathing – it is an effective, subjective use of sound and is well preserved on this transfer.
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