Ned Kelly

Ned Kelly (1970)

The true story of Australia's most legendary outlaw.

Unable to support his family in the Australian outback, a man turns to stealing horses in order to make money. He gets more deeply drawn into the outlaw life, and eventually becomes involved in murders. Based on the life of famed 19th-century Australian outlaw Ned Kelly.

Date of release
1970-06-10
TMDB
4.8 / 10 (28)
Runtime
1h 46m
Genres
Drama, Action, Western
Director
Tony Richardson

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: A$808K

Ned Kelly is a 1970 British-Australian biographical bushranger film. It was the seventh feature film version of the story of 19th-century Australian bushranger Ned Kelly, and was the first Kelly film to be shot in colour.

Production

In the early 1960s, Karel Reisz and Albert Finney announced plans to make a film about Ned Kelly from a screenplay by David Storey. Finney and Reisz flew to Australia in October 1962 and spent ten weeks picking locations and doing research.

In January 1963, it was reported the film would star Finney and Angela Lansbury. The movie was meant to be Finney's next project after Tom Jones (1963) and filming was to start in March 1963.

The British arm of Columbia Pictures agreed to put up the entire budget. However, British labour union regulations required a mostly British crew, and the cost of putting them up in Australia put the budget beyond what Columbia were willing to pay. (Tom Jones had yet to be released.) Finney and Reisz went on to make Night Must Fall (1964) instead.

Following this, Finney was still meant to make the film. However, he and Reisz eventually dropped out.

The project passed on to Tom Jones director Tony Richardson, who wrote the script in collaboration with Ian Jones, a Melbourne writer and producer of TV drama and expert on Ned Kelly. According to Kevin Brownlow, Ian McKellen was originally set to play the lead but the producers went for Mick Jagger.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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