Ned Kelly (1970)

Myth merges with myth as Mick Jagger, then pop dreamboat and celebrity rebel, and just off the set of Nic Roeg’s classic Performance, plays Ned Kelly as a popular hero and victim of anti-Irish British establishment. He and English director Tony Richardson do a good job of eliciting sympathy for our No 1 legend but unlike Roeg, who a couple of years later produced one of the classic films about white Australia, Walkabout (1971), Richardson only manages at best perfunctory story-telling with the film itself.  Blacks and Jews do not come off well but the strangest aspect is the Shel Silverstein penned,Waylon Jennings-sung soundtrack.

FYI: Jagger’s squeeze at the time Marianne Faithful was originally cast a Maggie Kelly but was shipped back to England after a drug overdose and was replaced by Diane Craig.

 

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