''Trooper Campbell'' is a 1914 film from director

Raymond Longford Raymond Longford (born John Walter Hollis Longford; 23 September 18782 April 1959) 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 Australia ...

based on a poem by

Henry Lawson Henry Archibald Hertzberg Lawson (17 June 1867 – 2 September 1922) was an Australian writer and bush poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period ...

. The movie is one of Longford's more obscure works. There is some reference to it being made but none of it being released in cinemas. The movie consisted of visual images to accompany an in-person recital of the poem. It was considered a

lost film A lost film is a feature film, feature or short film in which the original negative or copies are not known to exist in any studio archive, private collection, or public archive. Films can be wholly or partially lost for a number of reasons. ...

Eric Reade, ''History and heartburn: the saga of Australian film, 1896–1978'', Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 1979 p. 13
/ref> but was discovered in the 1980s. Film writers

Graham Shirley Graham Shirley is an Australian author, researcher, curator and filmmaker best known for his work in the area of Australian film history. He was one of the original class of the Australian Film Television and Radio School and is the co-author ...

and Brian Adams stated that the film:

Shows an advance on ''
The Romantic Story of Margaret Catchpole ''The Romantic Story of Margaret Catchpole'' (also released as ''The Queen of the Smugglers'') is a 1911 Australian silent film directed by Raymond Longford and starring Lottie Lyell. It is based on the true story of Margaret Catchpole, an adve ...
'', not so much in performance, which is still haunted by melodrama, as in the use of depth of field and positioning within the frame... tappears to have been hurriedly made (it was never listed among Longford's major achievements) and displays nowhere near the polish of Alfred Rolfe's '' The Hero of the Dardanelles'', completed halfway through the next year.Graham Shirley and Brian Adams, ''Australian Cinema: The First Eighty Years'', Currency Press 1989 pp. 35–36

References

External links

*
Trooper Campbell
at AustLit
Full text of poem''Trooper Campbell''
at

National Film and Sound Archive The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA), known as ScreenSound Australia from 1999 to 2004, is Australia's audiovisual archive, responsible for developing, preserving, maintaining, promoting, and providing access to a national c ...

Australian silent short films 1914 films 1910s rediscovered films Films directed by Raymond Longford Australian black-and-white films Rediscovered Australian films 1910s Australian films Films based on works by Henry Lawson Australian films based on poems 1910s English-language films {{Australia-silent-film-stub