The movie consists of 25 scenes. Frank Gardiner, real name Frank Christie (John Gavin), is a Goulburn boy accused of theft by his father, and ordered to quit. He meets his future wife and starts bushranging. His sweetheart's father throws her into the sea but Gardiner saves her. After several adventures he winds up in gaol, where he has been sentenced to serve 32 years' hard labor. After 10 years, however, he is released and he moves to America.[2]
John Gavin had starred in and directed two bushranger biopics for H.A. Forsyth, Thunderbolt and Moonlite before leaving Forsyth and going into partnership with Herbert Finlay and Stanley Crick. Their first collaboration was Ben Hall and His Gang followed by Frank Gardiner, which was announced on 9 January 1911.[5]
During the shooting of a scene where troopers were chasing after Gardiner, a horse collapsed and damaged its knee. In another scene which apparently made the final cut, Gardiner fires a pistol point blank in a trooper's face, and the latter was burnt and blackened with the powder.[2]
Reception
The film played in cinemas arond the same time as other Gavin directed bushranger films, Moonlite and Ben Hall.[6]
One critic thought that:
The best points about it is Gardiner's rescue of Annie Brown from drowning, the delivery from a convict's assault of the gaol governor's little daughter, and the finale where the ex-bushranger, exiled to America, at length (after a bitter goal experience) realizes the fact that "Honesty is the best Policy," which he seeks to inculcate apparently into his daughter and his daughter's sweetheart. That it is a thrilling continuation of desperate scenes that should never have occurred in Australia goes without saying, but it has the extremely bad tendency of holding up to the juvenile portion of the audience (who applauded most vociferously whenever law and order was trampled upon) an utter contempt for one of the most useful, respectable and reputable body of men in the Government service- the police.[7]
References
^"QUOTA FAVORED". The Sun. No. 5259. New South Wales, Australia. 15 September 1927. p. 14 (FINAL EXTRA). Retrieved 2 December 2023 – via National Library of Australia.
^"STAGE SONG and SHOW". The Sun. No. 165. New South Wales, Australia. 9 January 1911. p. 3 (CRICKET EDITION). Retrieved 1 July 2024 – via National Library of Australia.