Share
Clip description
A large number of police have surrounded the Glenrowan Inn. Ned Kelly and his gang attempt to release the hostages, but the nervous police open fire in the darkness and heavy rain. Superintendent Hare (Geoffrey Rush) calls on his men to cease fire, but several civilians are mortally wounded. Ned (Heath Ledger), Dan Kelly (Laurence Kinlan), Joe Byrne (Orlando Bloom) and the youngest, Steve Hart (Philip Barantini), don their newly-made armour to face the police. Ned is wounded in the left arm by the first police volley. Many police are wounded by their return fire.
Curator’s notes
This scene is a good example of how the demands of dramatic action can alter the depiction of history. Most of what we see happened, just not quite in this order, or with these numbers. Joe Byrne, Dan Kelly and Steve Hart did indeed die in the Glenrowan Inn, and Ned was taken alive outside it, severely wounded, but he was taken before the death of Dan and Steve, not after. Superintendent Hare was wounded in the wrist, but he was the only police casualty.
According to Ian Jones’s book, Ned Kelly – A Short Life (1995), the four outlaws stood in dark shadow on the hotel verandah for the first exchange of fire, but there was no attempt to release the remaining hostages before this took place. Jones says that Ned Kelly fired first, wounding Hare with the first shots, and the police returning fire did not know that the hotel was full of local people, including women and children, until they were informed during a lull in the firing. In contrast, the police in this clip are shown knowingly firing on the hostages and Superintendent Hare struggles to gain control of his men. This effectively depicts the police as simultaneously cold and incompetent villains. Nevertheless, according to Jones, when some of these people did attempt to leave the hotel later, one policeman deliberately fired on them, slightly wounding two children.
The number of police depicted in this scene is inflated. Joe Byrne is shown earlier saying that there are more than 100, but Jones writes that there were only a handful of police in the first exchange of shots, almost outnumbered by the four Melbourne newspaper reporters who had travelled on a special train to see this fight. By the final showdown with Ned a few hours later, there were 34 policemen present, reinforcements having arrived from Wangaratta and Benalla.
Several civilians were wounded in the gunfire, and three died – all hit by bullets passing into the hotel. The whole encounter, from first shot to last, played out over about 12 hours, from 3 am till mid-afternoon on the following day. The timeframe would never have worked for the dramatic finale of the film so it is compressed into a few minutes of screen time to create a fast-paced, high-action climax.
The changes to the order of events also further damages police credibility, as they are shown as trigger-happy and so nervous that they fire on helpless civilians. The confident, unified stance of Kelly’s gang is in strong contrast. Their confidence is in no small part because of the iconic Kelly armour, which is depicted in this clip gleaming in the darkness with sparks flying as bullets ricochet off the surface. The courage of Kelly’s men compared to the disarray behind police lines further emphasises the hero-villain roles in this retelling of the myth.
