A SPECIAL EPIPHANY SCREENING OF 'THE DEAD' AT THE IRISH FILM INSTITUTE. 1987. BASED ON THE SHORT STORY BY JAMES JOYCE FROM HIS COLLECTION 'DUBLINERS.' ADAPTED BY TONY HUSTON. DIRECTED BY JOHN HUSTON. STARRING DONAL MCCANN, ANGELICA HUSTON, CATHLEEN DELANY, HELENA CARROLL, RACHAEL DOWLING, COLM MEANEY, DONAL DONNELLY, MARIE KEAN, FRANK PATTERSON AND MARIA MCDERMOTT-ROE. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
I ended up at this special screening quite by default. (Default- the nicest word in the English language, according to Homer Simpson, and I certainly know what he means!) A friend of a friend found out that he couldn't use his ticket after all, he passed the ticket onto my chum who in turn passed it on to me and Bob's your Uncle, which is statistically certain to be true of some of you guys, haha.
The film was introduced by a lovely chap called Conor Horgan, who recently made a name for himself by directing THE QUEEN OF IRELAND. the famous documentary about drag queen Rory O'Neill, aka Panti Bliss.
Panti has become a figurehead for the LGBT movement in recent times and his fight for equality and against homophobia is known globally, so I was delighted to see the man who stood behind the camera on this documentary introducing THE DEAD. My first director of 2016!
He told us how THE DEAD was acclaimed director John Huston's last film. He was eighty years old and sadly dying when he made the film, a fact which adds poignancy to an already incredibly poignant movie, but more of that later. Many people think it's incredible that he made such a masterpiece in his frail and delicate condition, but make it he did. The results are out there for all to see.
We were lucky enough to have the actress who played Lily the maid in THE DEAD, Rachael Dowling, present in the audience for the screening. Nearly thirty years after the film was made, she's still looking pretty good, fair play to her.
The significance of the film's being screened on the 6th of January is that the 6th is the feast-day known as the Epiphany. It's also known as Little Christmas or Mothers' Christmas, the day on which the mammies of the world traditionally down tools after all their hard work over the festive season. Believe me, we do work hard...! The film is set on the 6th of January. I'm so delighted that I actually got to see it on that exact date. It makes it all the more special, somehow. It brightened up the night that we had to take the Christmas tree down no end, I can tell you, although I was bawling my eyes out by the end of it.
It's the year 1904. Two popular, well-to-do elderly sisters, Julia and Kate Morkan, are holding an epiphany party/cultural evening in their Dublin home. There's to be singing, dancing to piano-music, poetry and recitations, and any party pieces the guests can muster up between 'em.
That was how they did it in the olden days, before smartphones were invented and mp3 players and tablets and all the other nonsense that have both aided and also murdered communication in the modern era. I love the idea of a party where the guests have to provide their own entertainment. Nowadays, you'd be lucky if you got any of 'em to look up from their gadgets long enough to mumble a how'd-you-do. Sigh. God be with the days, as they say.
There's to be a goose as well, of course, as much booze as the guests can swill down, and a magnificent plum pudding set alight in the traditional way for dessert. The conversation will revolve around theatre, the opera and the guests' favourite singers. The sisters' nephew, Gabriel, will make a speech about how much everyone loves the two elderly ladies that will gladden those good ladies' hearts and reduce them to tears.
Afterwards, everyone will drive home in their own carriages or a hired carriage. The snow falls softly on the deserted streets of Dublin. The images are more beautiful than I could ever describe here. I'm from Dublin myself, and I know what Dublin streets and those fantastic old Georgian houses look like, both inside and out. Every time an opportunity comes up to take a tour of one, I take it. To see the familiar streets wrapped in a blanket of snow in the complete dark and utter stillness of an early January evening over a hundred years ago brought a lump to my throat. It's just gorgeous to see them
like that.
The interior of the house is beautifully authentic too, and the costumes! They're just amazing. As a matter of fact, the film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Costume Design, which is not at all surprising. The men are all in suits, which of course is boring enough, but the women are wearing long skirts, blouses and elaborate hairdos which must have taken them hours to arrange!
Everything they're wearing, and their surroundings as well, is in varying shades of brown, cream and beige. It's a very brown film. You know the way that a film can sometimes have a colour? Well, THE DEAD is definitely a brown film. But not in a bad way. I love the colour brown.
The physical differences between the sexes are so clearly delineated in their dress that there's absolutely no mistaking one for the other, if you know what I mean. Women dressed like women back then, in other words, which was nice. (Says the woman who lives in jeans...!)
I love the habitual drunk, Freddy Malins, and his ancient dowager of a mother, Mrs. Malins, a rich old widowed crone who loves her troublesome son but is irritated half to death by him and his gibberish as well. Cathleen Delany does a terrific job as Aunt Julia, who is one of those who one day soon will be nothing more than a 'shade.' Her song would bring tears to the eye of a bronze statue.
Colm Meaney, one of Ireland's best-loved actors, has a small role as one of the male guests and he gets one comical line to say:
'There'll be plenty of celery when you get to Mount Mellory...!' Good on ya, Colm.
Maria McDermott-Roe plays the politically-minded Molly Ivors, who seems to have a bee in her bonnet about Gabriel's writing for, of all things, an English newspaper. She's also famous for playing Dick Moran's pushy second wife Venetia in now-defunct rural soap, GLENROE.
The chap who created GLENROE, Wesley Burrowes, recently passed away but in its heyday, GLENROE was watched by millions of Irish people every Sunday night at 8.30pm on RTE ONE, just after popular geography quiz show WHERE IN THE WORLD, with blonde presenter Theresa Lowe. See, there's a bit of Irish television history for you, free gratis and for nothing...!
Angelica Huston (Gretta) is nothing short of magnificent as she is listening to Frank Patterson sing 'THE LASS OF AUGHRIM' or telling her husband Gabriel the heartbreaking story about the young man she loved in her youth when she lived in Galway. When she tells Gabriel about how he died tragically at the age of only seventeen, the cinema was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop.
When Gabriel's voice talks softly about the snow falling on the living and the dead alike, accompanied by images of snow-covered graveyards, rivers, trees and fields, I doubt if I was the only audience member crying quietly. I'm sure everyone was thinking about their own dead. I was thinking about a young person I knew who passed away over the festive season at the age of only twenty. The images of the silent, snow-covered graveyards in the darkest depths of winter will stay with me forever. They might just be the most touching images I've ever seen committed to celluloid, and I mean that.
I never thought of myself as much of a Joyce fan, having struggled in vain with PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN, never mind ULYSSES, but let me tell you something. The man who came up with THE DEAD must have had something to recommend him all the same.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based performance poet, novelist, film blogger, sex blogger and short story writer. She has given more than 200 performances of her comedy sex-and-relationship poems in different venues around Dublin, including The Irish Writers' Centre, The International Bar, Toners' Pub (Ireland's Most Literary Pub), the Ha'penny Inn, Le Dernier Paradis at the Trinity Inn and The Strokestown Poetry Festival.
Her articles, short stories and poems have appeared in The Metro-Herald newspaper, Ireland's Big Issues magazine, The Irish Daily Star, The Irish Daily Sun and The Boyne Berries literary journal. In August 2014, she won the ONE LOVELY BLOG award for her (lovely!) horror film review blog. She is addicted to buying books and has been known to bring home rain-washed tomes she finds on the street and give them a home. In 2003, she was invited to be a guest on Niall Boylan's 98FM late-night radio talk show purely on the basis of having a 'sexy voice.'
She is the proud possessor of a pair of unfeasibly large bosoms. They have given her- and the people around her- infinite pleasure over the years. She adores the horror genre in all its forms and will swap you anything you like for Hammer Horror or JAWS memorabilia. She would also be a great person to chat to about the differences between the Director's Cut and the Theatrical Cut of The Wicker Man. You can contact her at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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