Limelight Department - Soldiers of The Cross

The major innovation of the Limelight Department would come in 1899 when Booth and Perry began work on Soldiers of the Cross, arguably the first feature length film ever produced (please see the last section for discussion on this point).

The presentation contained fifteen, ninety second sections and two hundred lantern slides and ran for nearly two and a half hours. While some Lumiere footage was used in the opening passion sequence of the film, the majority of the footage was filmed in Melbourne, either in the attic of 69 Bourke Street, on the tennis court of the Murrumbeena Girls Home and in the pool at Richmond Baths. The presentation itself focused of the lives and deaths of early Christian martyrs and cost £550 to produce. The scenes were considered extremely violent for their time, including such images as the stoning of Stephen, the burning of Polycarp and unnamed Christians being tortured, beheaded, killed by gladiators, drowned and burned alive. The presentation included a cast of 150 Salvation Army officers who were stationed in Melbourne at the time. The many death scenes took their toll, with the cast suffering various injuries, including scorched hair and eyebrows from some of the fires used. The presentation premiered on 13 September 1901, at the Melbourne town hall to a crowd somewhere between three and four thousand. One reviewer spoke of how the death scenes caused several women to faint in the aisles.