A POPULAR LEGEND 

In 1951, Australian feature filmmaking was on the verge of collapse. Despite the industry’s claim to fame with the first feature-length film, The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), the late 1940s saw production slow to a trickle. Only a handful of features were made in the 1950s, some by visiting Hollywood filmmakers or England’s Ealing Studios, while others came from determined locals like Charles and Elsa Chauvel, and Lee Robinson. The government-backed revival of the industry was still almost 20 years away. 

‘There were hardly any films made in 1951 at all’, Michael Organ tells me. The former federal politician and archivist at the University of Wollongong is a cinephile who loves to research. In 2005, he discovered a print of the German silent classic Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) with previously missing scenes in the New Zealand Film Archive (now Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision). ‘Some of the overseas companies were making films like Kangaroo (Lewis Milestone, 1952) in Australia but it wasn't until some of those Chips Rafferty and Peter Finch films that you really start to get some locally made films in the 1950s that were actually reflecting the local ethos.’ 

The scarcity of homegrown films is one reason why Captain Thunderbolt stands out. Another is its director, New Zealand-born Cecil Holmes. Having arrived in Australia in 1949, Holmes worked on documentaries before making his dramatic feature debut with Captain Thunderbolt and he remained active in Australian film until his death in 1994. The film was produced by Associated TV Pty Ltd, headed by Holmes’ fellow New Zealander Colin Scrimgeour, who shared his passion for social justice and the underdog. The script was a collaboration between Holmes and radio playwright Creswick Jenkinson. ‘It was very much a local film made by Australasians – mostly Australian actors and crew, with a New Zealand director and producer,’ says Organ. 

The film is also of interest because of its subject matter. Scrimgeour, aiming for international markets, wanted Holmes to make an Australian western that would resonate abroad. With the NSW Police Department’s long-standing ban on bushranging films (for glorifying criminal behaviour) having fizzled out by the 1940s, the timing was perfect. Australians have always been captivated by the bushranger trope – ‘Even before Ned Kelly was hanged in 1880, there was a play about him,’ says Organ. ‘Australians are drawn to stories of injustice, and the rebel-as-hero is a staple in our storytelling, from Mad Max (1979) onward.’ 

Cecil Holmes’ daughter, Amanda Holmes-Tzafrir, reflects that ‘Thunderbolt is more than just an adventure story. My father was interested in the rebel in all of us, in what drives someone to become a Robin Hood and to go against the grain.’  

Holmes reportedly chose Thunderbolt as his subject after reading about him in Frank Clune’s Wild Colonial Boys (1948). The title of that book may also have inspired the ballad that appears in the film, with its ‘wild colonial boys’ refrain. Frederick Ward, known as Captain Thunderbolt, was a bushranger with the longest career of any in Australia, and he was not known to have shot at anyone. There’s even speculation that the man killed by police in 1870 wasn’t Ward at all, a view advanced in Annie Rixon’s book Captain Thunderbolt (c1948). 

A TALE OF TWO VERSIONS 

How did an Australian bushranger film end up in Prague? And why were there both shorter and longer versions of Captain Thunderbolt? The answer lies in the film’s struggle for distribution. In 1951, local interest in film production was minimal, and TV had yet to arrive in Australia. Associated TV took the unusual step of planning two versions from the start – one for cinemas and a shorter one for television. During production, the Daily Telegraph even called Thunderbolt ‘the first Australian-made television film’. Organ explains: ‘I think it’s Australia’s first cinema film made for television – or first TV film made for cinema. But it’s primarily a cinematic film, with top actors, a skilled director, and the finest technicians available at the time.’ 

Those actors included star Grant Taylor (from Forty Thousand Horsemen, Charles Chauvel, 1940) and Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell, who had a growing profile thanks to roles in Bitter Springs (Ralph Smart, 1950) and the just-completed Kangaroo. Cinematographer Ross Wood had worked on newsreels, documentaries and the occasional feature and would soon shoot the landmark documentary The Back of Beyond (John Heyer, 1954). Editor Margaret Cardin, who cut both versions of the film, had worked at Ealing Studios in the UK and was the first female editor employed by the BBC. ‘I think [my father] benefited greatly by working with people like the wonderful Margaret Cardin, who'd worked with David Lean, for example’, says Amanda Holmes-Tzafrir. 

Filming took place around Armidale and Uralla in NSW’s New England area, known as ‘Thunderbolt country,’ starting in March 1951. Amanda describes her father as an ‘unrepentant leftist radical,’ but emphasises that he was above all a ‘great humanist,’ interested in the human condition and the world. ‘That humanism shone through in Captain Thunderbolt and all his films,’ she says, noting how her father made a point of hiring cast and crew who faced discrimination or struggled to find work due to their political beliefs.  

Captain Thunderbolt was completed in time for cast and crew screenings in late 1951, followed by other private showings in early 1952. Captain Thunderbolt premiered at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in Czechoslovakia in July 1952, as reported in the Sydney Tribune newspaper and recalled by filmmaker Eddie Allison (during an oral history interview Andrew Pike conducted with Cecil Holmes in 1976). Amanda Holmes-Tzafrir states that her father didn’t travel to Prague until Karlovy Vary screened his second feature, Three in One (1957), when he received a special prize for Best Young Director at the festival. He took a print of Captain Thunderbolt to Europe, a Czech friend in Sydney having completed the subtitling translation for both films.

After finishing Captain Thunderbolt, Holmes had started an import film distribution company (New Dawn Films) and begun work on his next documentary, Words for Freedom (1955). He was also trying to get Captain Thunderbolt released in Australia. After a screening for distributors in January 1953 that generated little immediate response, the film finally had its Australian premiere in Armidale on 22 June 1955 before a slow and patchy cinema roll-out with short seasons in Sydney, Melbourne and regional Australia taking place over the next few years.  

The shorter, 53-minute version of Captain Thunderbolt was likely intended for television, though it may have been this version that screened in UK cinemas. Holmes later wrote in his autobiography One Man’s Way (1986) that the film returned twice its £15,000 budget from overseas sales. Captain Thunderbolt was reported to have played in the US, Canada, New Zealand, Spain (dubbed into Spanish), and in East and West Germany (dubbed into German). The shorter version made its Australian television debut on the ABC on 20 August 1960, with later screenings of it in Canberra in 1964. 

In the early 1970s, a 16mm copy of the TV version was acquired for what is now the NFSA collection (then held at the National Library of Australia). By that time, the longer 69-minute version had disappeared, presumed lost. In 2010, while examining a can of miscellaneous film, the NFSA found image and sound negatives for a three-minute trailer of Captain Thunderbolt, which hinted at the superior image quality lost in the transition to 16mm. The full 35mm version of the film quickly rose to the top of the NFSA’s Most Wanted list. 

KAPITÁN BLESK 

Michael Organ’s interest was ignited in 2023 when he learned that the existing version of Captain Thunderbolt was significantly shorter than the original cinema cut. With over 20% of the film missing, Organ began researching. His investigation led him to uncover a reference to a screening in Prague, 20 years after the Karlovy Vary premiere, at the Národní filmový archiv’s Ponrepo cinema in 1972. After consulting with NFSA Curator Emeritus Ray Edmondson OAM, Organ contacted the Prague archive. He also enlisted the help of the Consulate General of the Czech Republic in Sydney, which expedited his request. Soon, Organ heard back: the archive did indeed hold a 69-minute print of the film. 

Matěj Strnad, the Head of Curators at Národní filmový archiv, Prague, picks up the story. ‘We were approached by Mr Jeremy Whiteside of the Consulate General of the Czech Republic in Sydney. Credit should surely go to the Consulate for processing the request so promptly, but first and foremost to Mr Organ for his spot-on research. We didn't have to do much else other than inspect the print and prepare it for shipment [to the NFSA]. Of course, there were generations of archivists before us who took care of the print so it could survive to this day.’  

As to how Kapitán Blesk – as it’s titled in Czech – ended up in Prague, Strnad explains: ‘It’s not uncommon for prints of international titles shown at Karlovy Vary to be deposited in our archive. Other films have been preserved this way, and we’ve worked with archives in Myanmar and Sri Lanka on similar projects.’ Strnad, who also leads FIAF’s Programming and Access to Collections Commission, adds: ‘While preserving Czech film heritage is our mission, we remain committed to protecting non-Czech films in our collection, contributing to the preservation of global film heritage.’ 

FROM PRAGUE TO CANBERRA  

The 35mm print of Kapitán Blesk – complete with Czech subtitles – arrived in Canberra in early 2024 on loan to the NFSA from Prague. Our Conservation team found the four 35mm reels to be in excellent condition and they were prepared for separate audio and image scanning. The Audio Services team scanned one reel using both the COSP (Chase Optical Sound Processor) and the Resonances scanner, comparing results to select the best process for the remaining reels. Ultimately, the Resonances scanner was found to deliver a superior result. The NFSA’s new Lasergraphics Director scanner, installed just before the print arrived, was used to scan the image. 

The digitised audio and image files are now preserved in the NFSA collection, and the complete version of Captain Thunderbolt will soon undergo careful digital restoration. ‘It’ll be wonderful to finally see the entire film,’ says Amanda. ‘I hope we can give it a new life, like Three in One, which the NFSA digitally remastered. Australians can take pride in this film’s survival – it’s a reminder of a time when our film industry was almost crushed out of existence. My father would be very proud.’ 

NFSA Senior Curator Elena Guest adds, ‘The chances of discovering “lost films” are very slim. We've seen some notable examples where films have been incorrectly labelled or been discovered in a collector’s storage container. This find is incredibly significant and all due to the tenacious sleuthing of Michael Organ, the dedication of a generation of cinephile historians (including Graham Shirley, Andrew Pike, David Donaldson, Ray Edmondson, Anthony Buckley, Geoffrey Gardner and Adrian Danks) and our archival colleagues at the Národní filmový archiv, Prague. The NFSA continues to build the national audiovisual collection to tell the story of Australia and welcomes information around missing pieces of our cultural history. Given advancements in digital technology we are now able to preserve these valuable items for future generations.’ 

A FIRST NATIONS PERSPECTIVE 

The restoration process will include a careful comparison of both versions of the film. The longer cinema version adds an extended flashback sequence near the start that includes most of the main characters as kids. There are more scenes in NSW Parliament depicting criticism of the police’s failure to capture Thunderbolt and some romance, with Frederick Ward (Thunderbolt) and Jack Dalton (played by John Fegan), who grows up to join the police, both in love with Joan (played as an adult by Rosemary Miller).  

The cinema version also includes several scenes with the First Nations character Maggie, who marries Alan Blake in a scene cut from the television version. Caitlin Le Roy, who is Manager, First Nations Engagement at the NFSA and a Worimi and Yangkaal woman, explains the inspiration for Maggie. 'We know Maggie is likely to be a representation of Worimi bushranger Mary-Ann Bugg, played by Loretta Boutmy, an Australian actress with Maltese and Nouméen background. We can see that blackface was used to depict Loretta as Aboriginal. We also know that Loretta played Aboriginal people in other roles too. You can read about the use of blackface in this era of filmmaking in Liz McNiven’s article on the NFSA website, ‘A Short History of First Nations Filmmaking in Australia’. 

The contrast between Maggie and what we know of the real-life Bugg is marked. As Le Roy notes, 'In Captain Thunderbolt, Maggie is an illness-stricken love interest of Thunderbolt’s sidekick Blake. She is so little involved in the narrative that her scenes were [mostly] cut from the televised version without having any impact on the plot. While these changes may have been due to attitudes of the time towards interracial relations, when you compare this character to the stories we know of Mary-Ann Bugg – who was an expert horse rider, bush navigator, and bushranger as well as the partner and lover of Frederick Ward (Captain Thunderbolt) – the juxtaposition is striking.’  

Le Roy found the scene where Maggie denies her Aboriginality to Blake ‘heartbreaking’. She continues, ‘To portray an Aboriginal woman in this way speaks to the attitudes of the time [but] I still question why Maggie was depicted as weak. Especially when we know that Mary-Ann Bugg, who often denied her own heritage to avoid unwanted attention, was still an impressive person. Bugg was someone who the real Captain Thunderbolt relied on and a legend in her own right.’  

For Michael Organ, the breadth of issues covered in the script add to the film’s lasting significance. ‘It's got police brutality and judicial corruption, and a marriage between an Aboriginal woman and a non-Aboriginal man. In 1951, some of that would have just been so outrageous. And you've got to remember the convict stain was still very strong in Australia through to the 1970s. We had a part of Australian society that just wanted to bury all that while others thought, “No, this is the reality of Australia”.’  

From the 1960s onwards, Cecil Holmes returned to documentaries and spent the next decades making films with First Nations people. His second wife (and Amanda’s mother), Sandra Le Brun Holmes, recorded the sound on the films and was a researcher and collector for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (which became AIATSIS). The family moved to Darwin, where Amanda grew up. In his profile of Cecil Holmes for the NFSA, Graham Shirley notes, ‘After Holmes died on 24 August 1994, he was mourned widely by [First Nations] communities who had respected him for his friendship and battle for their rights.’ Speaking today, Amanda says, ‘There was such a deep admiration for him amongst people across a broad spectrum, you know, that it just amazed me. And it filled me with great pride as well, that he was so deeply loved.’ 

MOST WANTED 

‘We know so many of our silent films have disappeared and it's sad not to have copies of some of our films from the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, because they're an important part of Australian cinema.’ Organ continues, ‘Filmgoing was very important to Australians in the immediate postwar period before television appeared on the scene in 1956. A lot of people were going out to the pictures seeing films like Captain Thunderbolt, which makes them a significant part of the social heritage of Australia.’ 

Thanks to the efforts of researchers like Michael Organ, custodians like Amanda Holmes-Tzafrir and institutions like Národní filmový archiv, Prague and the NFSA, Cecil Holmes’ retelling of the Captain Thunderbolt story now has a chance to be seen by generations to come. 

The NFSA acknowledges the continued support and goodwill of all our partners to date, and we look forward to announcing further plans for Captain Thunderbolt. In the meantime, please contact us if you have any information about other lost audiovisual history featured on our NFSA Most Wanted list.  

REFERENCES 

R Brennan, Cecil William Holmes, Australian Dictionary of Biography, 2019, Accessed 6 September 2024.  

A Danks, Hard Labour: Cecil Holmes’ Captain Thunderbolt, Senses of Cinema, 2020, Accessed 6 September 2024.  

G Mayer, ‘Captain Thunderbolt’ in The Oxford Companion to Australian Film, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1999.  

M Organ, Captain Thunderbolt 1951, Blogger website, 2023, Accessed 6 September 2024. 

A Pike and R Cooper, Australian Film: 1900–1977 (revised edition), Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998.  

G Shirley, Cecil Holmes, australianscreen online, Accessed 6 September 2024. 

Additional captions

Top image: Police on horseback pursuing an outlaw in Captain Thunderbolt (Cecil Holmes, 1951). NFSA title: 803232

Michael Organ quote: Frederick Ward (Grant Taylor) and Alan Blake (Charles Tingwell) on horseback. NFSA title: 493683

Matěj Strnad quote: Mrs Ward (Jean Blue) serves tea to the young Jack Dalton, Joan and Fred Ward (actors unknown)

Amanda Holmes-Tzafrir quote: Cinematographer Ross Wood and director Cecil Holmes on set. NFSA title: 360674