The Auteur's Selection In the Shadow of Within Our Gates: Cult Guide

The Within Our Gates Phenomenon

As Frank Harvey's most celebrated work, it defines to create a dialogue between the viewer and the cult status.

The opening scenes are designed to represent the Commonwealth Defence Offices, where the Minister in busily engaged dealing with dispatches from the Imperial Government. There is in the employ of the department, in a responsible position, an Australian born of German parents. He is discovered by a German spy, Herr Henschell, a Melbourne business man, and through being helped out of a card entanglement by the latter's manager he is forced to copy official documents from the War Minister's cabinet. In the spy's house a wireless plant is concealed in an attic. Messages are being received from Berlin, and information dispatched there concerning the movements of the Australian transports. The German spy, however, has an adopted daughter, in love with the War Minister's son, who is about to go to the front. She discovers her father's treachery, and in forms the authorities, who quickly deal with the situation. Throughout the picture the military element is introduced. Soldiers are seen drilling in Melbourne; on board the transports en route to Egypt, and finally storming the heights of Gallipoli. In the first plane the Turks are shown on the hills, and then the actual assault by the Australians takes place. Shells are seen bursting in the water, throwing spray into the air, land mines are exploded, soldiers fall as they rush across the sandy strip and up the rugged cliffs.