Out of the Past - KVIFF 60/80 / Captain Thunderbolt / Australia 1952
In the 1950s, if the Karlovy Vary festival screened a film from a capitalist country, it usually involved an individual’s struggle against a corrupt society – and the Australian Western by New Zealand-born director Cecil Holmes was no different. This feature-length film romanticizing the legendary outlaw Fred Ward was long considered lost in its home country, until a complete copy was recently found at the National Film Archive in Prague. After more than seventy years, the myth of Captain Thunderbolt, the “Robin Hood of the Australian bush,” can thus be seen again in all its original glory.
Tomáš Hubáček
Film stills © Courtesy of Amanda Holmes-Tzafrir/Cecil Holmes Estate.
73 min / Black & white, DCP
Director Cecil Holmes
/ Screenplay Creswick Jenkinson
/ Dir. of Photography Ross Wood
/ Music Sydney John Kay
/ Sound Robert (Bob) Allen
/ Editor Margaret Cardin
/ Art Director Keith Christie
/ Producer John Wiltshire
/ Cast Grant Taylor, Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell, Rosemary Miller, Harp McGuire, John Fegan, Jean Blue, Loretta Boutmy
Cecil Holmes. Selected filmography: Captain Thunderbolt (1952), Three in One (1955), Words for Freedom (1959, short), Faces in the Sun (1964, short), Gentle Strangers (1972), Cyclone Approaching! (1976, short).
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