Plot summary

After a row, Ellinor Devine reveals to her husband Sir Richard that he is not actually the father of their son, also named Richard, but that he was fathered by her cousin, Lord Bellasis. Sir Richard throws his son out and storms off in a rage. Shortly afterwards, Richard Junior finds his biological father dead in the forest. Only the viewer and an unidentified witness know that Lord Bellasis has actually been killed by his own son, known as John Rex. However, it is Richard Devine who is found next to the body and arrested. Thinking that his father killed Bellasis, Richard wants to protect his mother's reputation and gives his name as Rufus Dawes.

The convict ship that brings Dawes to Tasmania also carries the new governor Vickers and his wife and his daughter Sylvia. The commander of the ship is a brutal man by the name of Maurice Frere. With the Vickers is a young girl, Sarah Purfoy, as a nurse to the child. However, she really is the fiancée of John Rex, convicted for forgery, and tries to help the convicts take the ship. The rebellion is led by a murderer named Gabbett. They fail when Dawes overhears their plans and manages to warn an officer while being brought to a quarantine room for the sick. Gabbett decides to claim that Dawes was the actual ringleader.

A few years later, Frere comes to visit Vickers and shows interest in Sylvia who has grown to be a beautiful young woman. Gabbett has come back after an escape and hints that he cannibalised his comrades to survive. Dawes, who is kept in solitary confinement on an island before the coast, attempts to drown himself. Frere has brought Vickers the order to give up the settlement and move to Port Arthur. Vickers embarks the convicts and sails with them. A smaller boat is supposed to carry Frere, Mrs Vickers and Sylvia, but is taken by John Rex, who maroons the three on the abandoned shore. There, Dawes finds them a few days later and manages to inspire them a new will to live. Sylvia especially takes to him very much and convinces him to make a boat, but Mrs Vickers dies before they can leave and makes Dawes promise to look after her daughter. The three survivors are found later by Vickers who has started to search for them. Frere takes the credit for saving Sylvia, who is herself unable to remember a thing after waking. Dawes is put back into prison.

Later again, it is shortly before the wedding of Sylvia and Frere. John Rex has been captured and Sarah Purfoy begs Frere to save his life by saying that he left them food and weapons. She threatens to reveal his past with some of the women in the settlement to Sylvia and Frere complies. Dawes, who also testifies, is shocked to find that Sylvia cannot remember him. He escapes on the night of the wedding to speak to Sylvia but is apprehended. The next day, a young convict named Cranky Brown is sentenced to a flogging for escape despite the protest of the reverend North and Dawes is ordered to carry out the punishment. He refuses to do so after Brown faints and his flogged himself. Upon finding that Brown is dead, Dawes curses Frere.

John Rex has planned another escape with the help of Gabbett. Dawes refuses to leave with them but asks Rex to post a letter for him. John Rex manages to escape with Sarah's help, while Gabbett and five other man get lost in the wilderness and Gabbett again starts killing and eating his comrades to survive. When he arrives at the shore, he is found by a group of sailors, who kill him. Rex reads Dawes letter in Sydney and understands his striking resemblance to Dawes, since they have the same father. He returns to England, where Ellinor Devine first accepts him as her son, but begins to suspect once he starts spending the family fortune. She confronts him with the fact that Richard was illegitimate, and Rex confesses to what happened.

Some years later again, Dawes is on Norfolk Island. Frere is on his way there to restore order. He quickly finds out that Dawes is the core of a rebellious "ring" whose members avenge every punishment through violence. The heavy punishments to which he sentences Dawes break him after some days. Reverend North becomes a close friend of Sylvia and when he visits Dawes in the hospital, the latter begs him to talk to Sylvia. Frere quickly learns about their friendship and after North infuriates him, he revenges it by punishing Dawes. One evening, he finds North and Sylvia in an embrace and suspects his wife to cheat on him. After he strikes her, Sylvia takes the next boat to the mainland; to her father. North goes to visit Dawes and confesses to him that he witnessed the murder of Lord Bellasis but did not tell anyone because Lord Bellasis held banknotes that North had forged. He gives Dawes his coat and tells him to go and see Sylvia. A storm breaks loose. The ship is about to sink as North frees the Norfolk Island convicts, who go after Frere. Sylvia recognises Dawes shortly before the ship sinks; at the same time, the convicts kill Frere. The next morning finds Dawes and Sylvia on a plank in calm waters.

Differences from novel

• The end was changed to a slightly more optimistic one. In the book, Dawes and Sylvia are already dead the next morning.
• In the book, Maurice Frere is Richard Devine's cousin.
• In the movie, North gives Dawes his coat and tells him to see Sylvia. In the book, he simply drops his coat and hat in Dawes' cell, who manages to escape because the guard is drunk.
• Frere is not killed in the book.
• "The Crow" is James "Jemmy" (not Jeremy) Vetch's nickname. In the movie, they are two different persons.
• Sylvia is still a child (eleven years old) at the time of the mutiny, whereas in the movie, she is already a young lady.
• In the book, Peter "Cranky" Brown is a twelve-year-old child, who suicides himself. The person named Cranky Brown in the movie is called Kirkland in the book..
• John Rex's death after a stroke is left out in the book.

Production

The film was one of the most expensive ever made in Australia. Raymond Longford

Raymond Longford

Raymond Longford was a prolific Australian film director, writer, producer and actor during the silent era. Longford was a major director of the silent film era of the Australian cinema. He formed a production team with Lottie Lyell...

 was originally meant to be director but the job eventually went to an American, Norman Dawn

Norman Dawn

Norman O. Dawn was an early film director. He made several improvements on the matte shot to apply it to motion picture, and was the first director to use rear projection in cinema....

. The lead actors were also imported from Hollywood.

Filming began on 10 August 1926, and included location work in Port Arthur

Port Arthur, Tasmania

Port Arthur is a small town and former convict settlement on the Tasman Peninsula, in Tasmania, Australia. Port Arthur is one of Australia's most significant heritage areas and the open air museum is officially Tasmania's top tourist attraction. It is located approximately 60 km south east of...

 and Macquarie Harbour

Macquarie Harbour

Macquarie Harbour is a large, shallow, but navigable by shallow draft vessels inlet on the West Coast of Tasmania, Australia.-History:James Kelly wrote in his narrative "First Discovery of Port Davey and Macquarie Harbour" how he sailed from Hobart in a small open five-oared whaleboat to discover...

. The original budget of ₤40,000 blew out to ₤60,000.

Reception

The movie was an enormous success at the Australian box office but did poorly overseas. It was estimated the combined losses of this film and Norman Dawn's follow up, The Adorable Outcast

The Adorable Outcast

The Adorable Outcast is a 1928 Australian silent film directed by Norman Dawn about an adventurer who romances an island girl. The big-budget film was shot mostly on location in Fiji. The film initially performed strongly at the box office but soon tailed off, and expected overseas success did not...

(1928) came to ₤30,000.

Cast

• George Fisher
  George Fisher (actor)
  George Fisher was an American film actor of the silent era. He appeared in 72 films between 1911 and 1929....
  
   as Rufus Dawes / John Rex
• Eva Novak
  Eva Novak
  Eva Barbara Novak was an American film actress, being quite popular during the silent film era. She was the younger sister of actress Jane Novak and daughter of Joseph, an immigrant from Bohemia, and Barbara Novak....
  
   as Sylvia Vickers
• Dunstan Webb as Maurice Frere
• Jessica Harcourt as Sarah Purfoy
• Arthur McLaglen as Gabbett
• Katherine Dawn as Mrs. Vickers
• Gerald Kay Souper as Major Vickers
• Marion Marcus Clarke as Lady Devine
• Arthur Tauchert
  Arthur Tauchert
  Arthur Michael Tauchert was an Australian actor best known for playing the title role in The Sentimental Bloke , which made him one of the most popular Australian screen stars of the 1920s...
  
   as Warden Troke
• Beryl Gow as Sylvia Vickers as child
• Compton Coutts as Reverend Meekin
• Mayne Lynton as Reverend North
• Carlton Stuart as Commandant Burgess
• William O'Hanlon as The Crow
• Arthur Greenaway as Lord Bellasis
• Edward Howell
  Edward Howell
  Edward Howell was a U.S. Representative from New York.Born in Newburgh, New York, Howell attended the public schools....
  
   as Kirkpatrick
• Fred Twitcham as Surgeon Pine
• Charles Weatherby as Captain Blunt
• Steve Murphy
  Steve Murphy
  Steve Murphy is a Minnesota politician and a former member of the Minnesota Senate who represented District 28, which includes portions of Goodhue, Wabasha and Winona counties in the southeastern part of the state. A Democrat, he was first elected in 1992, representing the old District 29 until...
  
   as Jeremy Vetch
• Claude Turton as convict
• Jimmy McMahon as convict boy 1
• Hartney J. Arthur as convict boy 2
• William Whornton as aide-de-camp

External links

• For the Term of His Natural Life at National Film and Sound Archive
  National Film and Sound Archive
  The National Film and Sound Archive is Australia’s audiovisual archive, responsible for developing, preserving, maintaining, promoting and providing access to a national collection of audiovisual materials and related items...