AustLit

Like the 1911 film The Bells, The Burgomeister is an adaptation of the nineteenth-century stage melodrama by French writers Erckmann-Chatrian. An inn-keeper murders a Jewish guest for his money but, years later, his guilt forces him into hallucinations of his victim's sleighbells and a dream state in which he is tried for and convicted of the crime.

Like The Bells, The Burgomeister is a 'lost film': in the case of the latter film, the National Film and Sound Archive knows of a single extant sequence.

A film tracing the Kelly Gang's descent into bushranging to the eventual stand-off with troopers at Glenrowan.

Contemporary reviews were not entirely positive. The film critic for the Sydney Morning Herald, for example, wrote that

'"When the Kellys Rode" is not a master-piece. The dramatic element in the story has been thinly worked out, and the acting falls below the standard which present-day audiences demand. The appeal of the film lies in its lack of pretension. The naive simplicity of the treatment gives a freshness of impression which many other Australian productions have lacked. One charming feature is the series of landscape views which Mr. Tasman Higgins has photographed in the Megalong Valley and along Cox's River.'

Source:

'Banned Film. "When the Kellys Rode." Simple Adventure Story'. Sydney Morning Herald 18 May 1934, p.11.

'The opening scenes are laid in the North-west where a small boy–the son of the station owner–is lost in the bush and is eventually found by a tramp whose past is an item of interest. A successful gambler on the trotting track, he takes to drink and imagines that he loses the esteem in which he is held by his lady love, Thinking that he has fallen out with, his best friends he quits the city life, shoulders his swag and leaves for the bush. It is while he is on the track that he finds the boy–the son of his old love. After returning the child to his home, the tramp was given a job on the station and while there meets his former female friend, who died a short while after. He also did not long survive her, dying from injuries received while doing a service for the youth.'

Source:

'Down Under', Sunday Times, 27 March 1927, p.14 (via Trove Australia).

A film version of the story of David and Bathsheba, made during a brief absence from Australia by film-maker Harry Southwell.

Despite being produced overseas, the film was apparently marketed as an Australian production, though no cinematic release has been traced: see note on production and distribution below.

A film version of the story of the Kelly Gang.

According to contemporary reviews:

'The picture shows the Kelly home and the misunderstandings there with the trooper Fitzpatrick, which really caused the taking to the bush of the young outlaws. Among other events shown are the holding-up of Younghusband Station, the robbing of the bank at Jerilderie, the battle at Glenrowan, and the last stand of Ned Kelly in his famous armour.'

Source:

'When the Kellys Were Out', Mail [Adelaide], 15 September 1923, p.12.

Advertised as a murder mystery.

'The picture reveals all the stirring events in the career of the bushrangers, the drama closing with the capture of Ned, the leader, who is relieved that the struggle is over, while his last words imply that the scaffold must ever be the fate of those who wantonly rebel against the mighty and righteous forces of "Law and Order."'

Source: 'The Kelly Gang', Portland Guardian, 16 August 1920, p.2.