The Sentimental Bloke

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The Sentimental Bloke
Directed by	Raymond Longford
Written by	C.J. Dennis (poem) Raymond Longford Lottie Lyell
Starring	Arthur Tauchert Lottie Lyell
Release date(s)	1919
Country	Australia
Language	Silent film
IMDb profile

The Sentimental Bloke (1919) is an Australian silent film based on the 1915 Australian poem The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke by C.J. Dennis.

The film, from the Southern Cross Feature Film Company of Adelaide, was made by Raymond Longford and Lottie Lyell, at that time the best known partnership in Australian cinema. It starred Lyell and the vaudeville comedian Arthur Tauchert and was filmed mainly in the inner city Sydney suburb of Woolloomooloo.

Tauchert plays the 'sentimental bloke', a Sydney larrikin, who vows to abandon his life of gambling (playing Two-up) and drinking when he falls in love with Doreen (Lyell), who works in a pickle factory.

Lyell is thought to have co-authored the screenplay, written the titles, edited the film and helped with the direction.

The Sentimental Bloke uses intertitles taken from the original poem written in Australian slang and was a hit when it opened in Melbourne Town Hall on October 4, 1919, breaking all existing box office records. It was also popular in Britain and New Zealand, but did not succeed in the U.S., where test audiences failed to understand the language. Despite being recut with Americanised intertitles, having some scenes cut out, and being renamed for the American market as The Story of a Tough Guy, it was withdrawn from distribution.

The film was rediscovered in the 1950s, and a new print was screened at the Sydney Film Festival in 1955. Longford was found to be working as a night watchman on the Sydney wharfs; Lyell had died in 1925 of tuberculosis.

Since then the original negative sent to the U.S. has been discovered (mislabelled as The Sentimental Blonde) at the Film Archive at George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, New York. Found to be a different version and of a better quality print than any of the Australian copies, this 'new' version premiered at the 2004 Sydney Film Festival and has played at the 2005 London Film Festival.

[edit] See also

List of films based on poems

[edit] External links

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