Sometimes called the world's first feature-length film, Soldiers of the Cross was more a multimedia presentation: a two-hour lecture, accompanied by songs and '220 limelight pictures and 17 cinematographe views' ('Town Talk', Geelong Advertiser, 4 October 1900, p.2). Other advertisements suggest it was 200 limelight pictures and 15 film segments.
Despite not being exclusively a film, Soldiers of the Cross was a significant early step in Australian film-making: the seventeen film segments (each ninety seconds long) were filmed exclusively for this production, using as cast members up to 150 members of the Salvation Army.
Soldiers of the Cross was usually billed as a lecture, but advertisements and reviews made much of the 'cinematographe' / 'kinematographe'.
The scenes showed the various martyrdoms of Christian saints. Contemporary reviews noted that 'Some of the films are wonderfully realistic, such as the stoning of Stephen, burning of Polycarp, throwing Christians to the tigers, and also the slaughter of the Christians in the Catacombs' ([Untitled], Daily Telegraph, 14 January 1901, p.2).
When creator Herbert Booth later left the Salvation Army, he negotiated to keep Soldiers of the Cross, and later toured it around the United States.
