Cirrus@Austlit

'As devised by Martin Keith, the scenario pictures the exploits of Dawn's company itself. Players arrive on location to make their first talkie, and the screen reveals both the comedy and the heart-break of it before the picture is in the cans. The idea sounds good. It departs from the back-stage business, yet allows specialty numbers to be dropped in as naturally as if a footlight story were being shot.'

Source:

'Australia Makes a Talkie: First All-Dialogue and Music Film', The Register News-Pictorial, 31 May 1930, p.19.

A Pacific Island romance, The Adorable Outcast follows Stephen Conn, an adventurer who is in love with a beautiful young native woman named Luya. When a rumour surfaces suggesting that Conn has a hoard of gold hidden away, an evil blackbirder, Fursey, kidnaps Luya as a ransom. Conn enlists the aid of Luya's tribal members to help him get her back, and they subsequently attack Fursey and his fellow traders at their stronghold. After freeing his love, Conn is made aware that her parents were actually white-skinned. This allows them to unite.

Based on Marcus Clarke's classic novel, originally published in 1870 as His Natural Life, the story tells of convict Rufus Dawes, who has been wrongfully accused of a crime and sent to the penal colony of Van Diemen's Land for the term of his natural life. In his attempts to escape the colony, Dawes falls in love with Sylvia (a warden's daughter) and confronts his sinister lookalike John Rex and the evil convict Gabbett.

American director/screenwriter Norman Dawn's adaptation strays from the original book considerably. For example, the ending sees the fate of Rufus and Sylvia, adrift on a raft in the ocean, left in the balance, whereas Clarke's original story has the pair drown. However, the film retains a strong, visual style, especially in climactic crowd scenes.