The level of historical veracity of this feature should not come as a surprise, given it was written and directed by Harry Watt. He had started his career behind the camera lens within documentaries, having learned the art from watching the great Robert Flaherty while serving as a laboratory assistant on the landmark 'Man of Aran' in 1934. He had then proceeded to direct a series of acclaimed documentaries prior to and during the Second World War. Having scored an early success at Ealing Studios, he had been sent to Australia by its head, Michael Balcon, to find a subject for a film. The subsequent success of 'The Overlanders' three years earlier had led to the studios opening an Antipodean branch to their interests.
The events portrayed do closely trace the history of the miner insurrection on the Ballarat goldfields in 1854, culminating in the construction of the Eureka Stockade and the raising of the flag of the 'Southern Cross'. As depicted here, the trigger for the uprising was twofold: firstly, the strict enforcement of the hated license fee system, introduced by the colonial authorities as a means to drive the waves of prospectors back to working the land thereby shoring up the future of the colony; secondly the unpunished murder of Scottish miner, James Scobie, by local bar owner and friend to the local police, James Bentley. The disgruntled miners would torch Bentley's hotel, and immediately set about drawing up the Ballarat Reform League, with its own aforementioned banner.
More artistic licence has been given to the characterisation of some of the principal figures behind the insurrection, and none more so than the eventual leader of the insurrection Peter Lalor. To a large extent, this is down to the casting of Australian actor, Chips Rafferty, who had starred in Watt's earlier box-office success, and whom the Rank organisation demanded he be the star attraction. Here, not only does Rafferty fail entirely to put on an Irish accent - there was even discussion of having his obvious antipodean accent dubbed - but his tall angular physique, combined with a preposterous beard, makes him appear almost comical, as opposed to inspirational. Given that Lalor was the son of a British MP, hailed from a family of politically active landowners, as exemplified by the fact that two of his brothers also fought on either side of the American Civil War, the simple easy-going, bucolic figure presented here is wholly fictitious. Though Rafferty's performance encapsulates the decency of the leader and his movement, his failure to dominate the screen was so apparent that producer/editor, Leslie Norman suggested to Watt that he replace Rafferty with Peter Finch, a change which the latter would always regret not taking.
The rest of the cast turn in reasonable performances, such as Austrian character actor, Peter Iling, as Lalor's friend and fellow Italian prospector, Raffaello Carboni. Although the friendship depicted here as mining partners may be imagined, after his politicisation in Ballarat and back in his homeland, Carboni turned to writing fiction, copies of which he sent to Lalor. Gordon Jackson also turns in one of his characteristic earnest roles of this early period of his acting career, as the young impressionable Scottish prospector Tom Kennedy. As for Finch, who also served as casting director within Australia, blink and you may miss him as the more moderate presence within the miners' movement, the Welsh chartist from this reviewer's backyard in Mid-Wales, John Hummfray. Finally, as the mining settlement schoolteacher and Lalor's love-interest, Jane Barrett, once more shows her acting ability, so evident in 'Captive Heart' three years earlier, in what would be her last real prominent cinematic role.
The studio had given Watt a substantial budget, and he took great responsibility upon himself to ensure that the Australian base of operations should produce a small batch of features of the highest quality. Thus, together with Australian cinematographer, George Heath, he set out to provide luxuriant expansive shots of the New South Wales landscape, while also taking the finer detail into account in having constructed an entire mining settlement from scratch.
At the outset of this feature, Watt declared his intention to produce a film that had never been released before - an historical documentary. This is probably what leads to one of the film's main deficiencies, the pace of events, and this is exemplified with there being at least three mounted police raids of the mining camp in search of unlicensed miners, when one would have sufficed to establish the British colonial authorities' subjugation of these immigrant prospectors. Yet, in terms of action, Watt's purpose was not helped by the reality behind the final confrontation between the defenders of the stockade and the British soldiers sent to crush them. The battle was brief and terribly one-sided with the ramshackle army of miners overrun in just ten minutes.
The ultimate box-office failure of the feature is still a crying shame as Watt had invested so much time in its accurate representation of the history, having personally interviewed descendants of the miners and amassed extensive research on the goldfields. Added to this Watt had very strong anti-royalist, and socialist views, and, politics aside, had the courage to show how the autocratic rule of the British colonial authorities led to such resentment that the events in Ballarat would sow the seeds of democracy in Australia. Yet, the production was also beset by difficulties from the outset, with floodwaters only allowing five days shooting in five weeks. Such difficulties did nothing to help the £200,000 overspend on the movie's budget. Furthermore, accidents plagued the cast as Rafferty suffered two broken ribs in fight scenes, and burned his hands in the shooting of the rescue scene from the mob's burning down of Bentley's Hotel.
The film's poor reception has been acknowledged as the reason why Ealing Studios cut back on their plans for their Australian productions. Certainly, in terms of its overspend this was true to an extent, as Ealing studios had intended £250,000 to spend on six features. However, this appraisal is also unfair as the film hit theatres just as a new Australian government, that of Robert Menzies, appeared with a far less welcoming attitude towards Australian film-making - especially those of a leftist persuasion from a British film-maker. Thus, it is time for the film to be reappraised as a genuine piece of quality cinema, despite the aforementioned flaws. If the film is guilty of anything, then Dilys Powell, the leading film critic at that time, pinpointed it, when she wrote in the Sunday Times in January 1949: 'Fidelity to historical character has meant there is no concentration of sympathy on any single figure...what a film should give us is not the truth so much as the spirit of the truth: we ask not to be told, but to be convinced.'
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