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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781841505923 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Intellect Books |
| Publication date: | 10/20/2011 |
| Series: | ISSN |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 132 |
| File size: | 18 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Jez Conolly is the author of Beached Margin: The Role and Representation of the Seaside Resort in British Films and a regular contributor to the Big Picture magazine.
Caroline Whelan is a freelance writer and researcher.
Jez Conolly holds an MA in Film Studies and European Cinema from the University of the West of England and is a regular contributor to The Big Picture magazine and website.
Caroline Whelan is an independent writer and researcher.
Read an Excerpt
World Film Locations Dublin
By Jez Conolly, Caroline Whelan
Intellect Ltd
Copyright © 2011 Intellect LtdAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84150-592-3
CHAPTER 1
UPFRONT
DUBLIN
City of Imagination
Text by JEZ CONOLLY AND CAROLINE WHELAN
IN HIS POEM 'Nights on Planet Earth' Campbell McGrath refers to Dublin as an 'ideal city of the imagination,' likening it to 'a movie you can neither remember entirely nor completely forget.' This neatly sums up the semi-illusory experience of finding and spending time in the cinematic Dublin. By turns what one discovers is a screen-place that is never quite what it seems and yet so much more than might be expected.
Despite, or perhaps because of this dichotomy, Dublin conforms well to the notion of the 'urban imaginary' put forward by James Donald in his book Imagining the Modern City. Donald puts the case that representations of the city teach us how to see and make sense of it: 'It defines the co-ordinates for our imaginative mapping of urban space.' For Donald, the role of the city as a state of mind produces a blurring of the boundaries between the real and the imagined city: 'It is true that what we experience is never the real city, 'the thing itself."
With regard to Dublin's relationship to and representation through cinema, a useful starting place can be found by looking back to the early cinema-going habits of the city's population. The history of film in Dublin dates back to the dawn of cinema itself. The city witnessed screenings of the Lumière brothers' films in April 1896 in the Star of Erin Music Hall on Dame Street (now known as the Olympia Theatre and used as a filming location one hundred years later for Mike Newell's An Awfully Big Adventure [1995]), and the first known moving images of Dublin were captured less than a year later. The Volta, Dublin's first purpose-built cinema was opened at 45 Mary Street in 1909 and was managed, for a few weeks at least, by none other than James Joyce. By 1922 there were 37 cinemas in business in Dublin.
This rise in popularity of the medium among Dubliners was not immediately reflected in a wave of Dublin-set film productions. The battle for national independence and the censorious nature of the Catholic authorities are in part behind this initial lack of production impetus. While it is certainly possible to compile a list of notable films shot or set in Dublin since those early days, the number of productions that one might routinely associate with the Irish capital seems, upon initial reflection, to be somewhat dwarfed by the role call of movies that can be readily attributed to many other major cities. To understand why this is the case one must first examine the wider history and culture of Irish Cinema to see how the country and the city have been depicted through both Irish and non-Irish films.
Up to the end of the 1970s the tendency was for US-backed films set in Ireland to exploit the more hackneyed pastoral and traditional preconceptions of Irish culture and society. So the view of Ireland seen by the world was typified by the likes of John Ford's The Quiet Man (1952) and to some extent David Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1970). The pull of the rural or coastal wilderness of the country meant that Dublin, with its turbulence and politics, tended not to figure in the minds of many producers looking for a story or a location that would appeal to a wide audience.
For a country that has repeatedly featured in the world's top ten of cinema-going per capita statistics there seems to have been a comparative lack of appetite among home audiences for Irish-made films singularly intended for Irish consumption, at least until relatively recently. Film was simply not the medium through which Irish culture routinely exerted itself.
The advent of the Celtic Tiger era has changed all that. The fluctuating conditions experienced during this period have led to a succession of home-grown films, many of them figuring Dublin as the indicative face of change. To a greater or lesser degree the films have set out to examine what it is like to live through these interesting times, from the brightly-coloured hedonistic highs to the shameful, squalid lows of a society and a city effectively being recreated at great speed. These films have found a substantial indigenous audience, reflected in the setting-up of the Irish Film Institute located in Temple Bar, the re-emergence of the Irish Film Board, the establishment and success of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival and the opening of new film venues such as the Light House Cinema at Smithfield, although this venue sadly succumbed to the economic downturn.
As a result of this growth of activity and focus on contemporary metropolitan issues as the central themes of many more Irish films, it would seem that cinema has finally secured its place at the country's cultural top table and it looks set to stay there despite the post-Celtic Tiger comedown. Film-makers have demonstrated their ability to respond to the perpetual flux of the city and in their own way are contributing to the tradition of transcribing a Dublin of the imagination. James Joyce's Ulysses, acting as a fictional recording of the people and the places, fixed Dublin in the imagination forever. The film scenes that feature in this book are mere flickers of memory by comparison but they constitute an approachable projection of an imagined Dublin, neither remembered entirely nor completely forgotten, that is ripe for exploration.
SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL (1959)
LOCATION
Glasnevin Cemetery, Finglas Road, Dublin 11
'When I came back to Dublin I was court-martialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.'
— Brendan Behan, given an Irish Republican Army funeral at Glasnevin in 1964
GLASNEVIN CEMETERY is home to the graves of approximately 1.2 million people. Among the names on the headstones one can find those of Parnell, O'Connell, Collins, de Valera and others synonymous with Irish political history and the Republican struggle. Michael Anderson's Shake Hands with the Devil opens with a lingering crane shot showing a multitude of shadows being cast across the consecrated ground by the many monuments and memorials. An ominous voice-over dates and sets the scene: 'Dublin, 1921 - a city at war.' We see a graveside being tended by Kerry O'Shea (Don Murray), an Irish-American medical student now resident in Dublin since returning to bury his mother next to his father, killed in the 1916 Easter Uprising. A funeral procession that has passed behind him is suddenly stopped in its tracks by a unit of the Black and Tans. The coffin falls to the ground as the mourners flee, breaking open to reveal a cache of firearms inside. O'Shea covers for one of the escaping mourners under questioning, a moment that sparks his own involvement in the movement. In a film that constitutes an oversimplified whistle-stop tour of Irish Republican history, this unsubtle yet potent sequence illustrates the extent of Dubliners' siege mentality under British military pressure. ->Jez Conolly
GIRL WITH GREEN EYES (1964)
LOCATION
O'Connell Bridge, Dublin
THIS ADAPTATION OF the Edna O'Brien novel The Lonely Girl depicts two young women enjoying urban independence following their restrictive rural upbringing. Quiet country girl Kate Brady (Rita Tushingham) and her fun-loving friend Baba Brennan (Lynn Redgrave) seek the fun and freedom that the big city has to offer. Kate falls for middle-aged writer Eugene Gaillard (Peter Finch) and they embark on a relationship, despite the disapproval of her sternly Catholic family and his estranged wife's interfering friends. There is a moment early in Girl With Green Eyes when Kate and Baba are strolling across O'Connell Bridge. Their friend Bertie (Pat Laffan), driving a banged-up old van, asks them to join him on a trip to do some business in the Dublin Mountains. He holds up traffic while calling them over ('For Pete's sake, get a move-on: this yoke's not taxed!') and they decide to go with Bertie, Baba taking the passenger seat and Kate huddling into the back of the vehicle. The sequence may be brief but is significant since it establishes the busy urban lifestyle: there are multiple people moving along the footpaths, the roads are bustling with traffic and there is the constant opportunity for an impulsive sense of adventure. This is in stark contrast to the scenes which take place in Kate's rural family home: isolated within a community who have condemned her love affair with a married man, she finds herself emotionally and literally alone in the serene yet desolate surroundings of the countryside. ->Christopher O'Neill
ULYSSES (1967)
LOCATION
From Sandymount Strand, Sandymount, Dublin to Prospect Cemetery, Glasnevin, Dublin
ULYSSES IS A NOVEL rooted, perhaps more so than any other, in a sense of place. This aspect, although perhaps one of the less prominent reasons why the book has long worn the tag 'unfilmable,' would make any attempt to capture its essence difficult. The decision by maverick American filmmaker Joseph Strick to base his adaptation of Joyce's novel in 1960s Dublin rather than its original setting of 1904 ensures the mise-en-scène does not take anything away from the film text, and in fact serves to highlight the unlimited contemporaneity of Joyce. If anything, this juxtaposition of past and present affords the film a unique timelessness. Joyce's attempts to plan out the winding topography of Dublin city is perfectly depicted during this carriage ride from the South to the North of the city, stopping beside the Grand Canal where we catch a glimpse of the gasworks mentioned in the novel, and offering us a unique depiction of industrial Dublin in the 1960s. Film critic Bosley Crowther commented upon the city's modernity during this passage: 'the streets are full of automobiles. The quays along the river are crowded with modern ships.' As the carriage moves northwards towards Glasnevin, we witness waterways enlivened with the Liffey. ->Colm McAuliffe
THE ROCKY ROAD TO DUBLIN (1968)
LOCATION
Peamount Hospital, Newcastle, Co. Dublin
THE YOUNG PRIEST, Father Michael Cleary, snaps his fingers, swings his knees, taps his feet and sings a rendition of Chattanooga Shoe Shine Boy for a roomful of bemused sick women in a Dublin hospital. This bizarre moment cuts to the heart of an Ireland that Peter Lennon wanted to capture in his excoriating 1968 documentary. The charismatic Cleary had been sent out by the Catholic hierarchy to show how down to earth the priesthood had become. Instead, Cleary's behaviour helped show the smothering control of the church and the extent of the public's servility to it. The film shows the Irish Catholic church policing the populace like a secret service. They lecture you about sex on your wedding day, sing songs to you while you are dying and patronize you by the graveside. And they will make sure to stifle any cultural debate. Lennon set out to explore the theme: 'What do you do with your revolution once you've got it?' And he proceeded to show Ireland in the 1960s as a cultural backwater - in the clasp of censorship, brainwashed by the church and populated by what Sean O'Faolain called 'urbanised peasants'. The documentary was effectively banned in Ireland for 30 years. Coutard's fleet-footed, fly-on-the-wall style captured an Ireland unaware of itself and damning itself out of its own mouth. Decades later, the all-singing, all-dancing priest was found to have been engaging in sexual relations with his 17-year-old housekeeper while at the time of filming, making the portrait complete. ->Paul Lynch
EDUCATING RITA (1983)
LOCATION
The Stag's Head Pub, 1 Dame Court, Dublin 2
IN EDUCATING RITA, Dublin stands in for Liverpool throughout. Rita (Julie Walters) is a hairdresser who takes an Open University course, and the alcoholic, world-weary Dr. Frank Bryant (Michael Caine) is her lecturer. Despite initial reluctance, he warms to the engaging and un-cynical Rita to the extent that he asks her to a dinner party he is hosting. In an extended scene the initially excited Rita makes it as far as his front steps only to be intimidated by the prospect of entering into an unfamiliar and daunting environment. She finds herself back at her local pub, where her husband, parents, sister and assorted friends are singing along to the jukebox. Her husband, who disapproves of her studies, welcomes her back into the fold and she takes a seat at the table. Later she tries to get Frank to understand her fears about not fitting in his world. In a beautifully realized combination of flashback and voice-over she explains to him the painful undercurrents of what seems from the outside to be a happy sing-a-long. Without pretension she deconstructs for him the situation more confidently than she could have done before they met, summing up her frustrations in her unhappy mother's words: 'There must be better songs to sing than this'. The ornate but unpretentious interior of The Stag's Head in Dublin perfectly frames the tensions and frustrations she articulates. She sits lonely in a crowd of people she no longer feels a sense of belonging with, and yet is terrified of leaving. ->David Bates
PIGS (1984)
LOCATION
Sir John Rogerson's Quay, Dublin 2
JIMMY (JIMMY BRENNAN) breaks into a derelict Georgian tenement and sets up residence before quickly being joined by other social outcasts: conman George (George Shane), mentally-unstable Tom (Maurice O'Donoghue), drug dealer Ronnie (Liam Halligan), Jamaican pimp Orwell (Kwesi Kay) and his girlfriend/prostitute Mary (Joan Harpur). But tension arises within the group as these extreme personalities clash and the pressures of the outside world mount. From its nocturnal opening shots of dilapidated buildings, burning cars and boarded-up houses, Pigs paints Dublin as a claustrophobic ambushment for characters who find themselves marginalised by society. Former seaman Jimmy yearns for escape but finds himself compounded by his situation. He visits old friend Doc (Pat Daly), whose current cargo ship is moored in Dublin, in the naive hope of finding work, but all he can offer is a couple of beers and a few packets of duty-free cigarettes. In one of the few moments in Pigs where a wide-open exterior location is used, Jimmy and Doc stand on deck overlooking the Liffey while, in the distance, the North Bank of the river can be seen. It is early morning, the sky is dark blue and the ship is ready to depart. Despairingly, Jimmy sings a bawdy tune - which he no doubt learnt on one of his past voyages - before bidding farewell. The sequence ends with a panning shot of Jimmy standing ashore and watching the vessel slowly leave his sight as it sails away. Jimmy's hope of fleeing Dublin is thwarted and he returns to his makeshift home at the squat. ->Christopher O'Neill
THE DEAD (1987)
LOCATION
From Dublin Castle to the city quays
THE DEAD IS AN ADAPTATION of James Joyce's short story of the same name and the last film directed by John Huston. Set on 6 January 1904, the Feast of the Epiphany, the story unfolds at a dinner party hosted by the Morkan sisters and their niece Mary Jane (Ingrid Craigie), and attended by their nephew Gabriel Conroy (Donal McCann) and his wife Gretta (Anjelica Huston). Just before the last few remaining guests depart and as she descends the stairs, Gretta is moved to sentiment by the distant tune of 'The Lass of Aughrim'. Later she recounts a story to her husband of a lost love, a story Nora Barnacle once told James Joyce, the telling of which has a profound effect on Gabriel. This scene shows the cab journey taken by Gretta and Gabriel back to their hotel. Beautifully shot in snow covered streets that appear lit only by gas lamps and the blue hue of the night sky, the cab j ourneys away from Dublin Castle, along the quays and across an imagined O'Connell Bridge. Anticipating the tragic story that Gretta later recounts to Gabriel while in their hotel bedroom, it is as if they are being driven by Death himself. The contrast of the white snow with the silhouetted cab driver suggests the Death himself. The contrast of the white snow with the silhouetted cab driver suggests the simultaneous birth within Gabriel as he learns of the death of his wife's first love and becomes aware that he has never experienced such intense love. This awakening of knowledge corresponds to the death of an opportunity he will never have. ->Díóg O'Connell
(Continues...)
Excerpted from World Film Locations Dublin by Jez Conolly, Caroline Whelan. Copyright © 2011 Intellect Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Maps/Scenes
Scenes 1-8 – 1959-1988
Scenes 9-16 – 1989-1996
Scenes 17-24 – 1996-2000
Scenes 25-32 – 2000-2003
Scenes 33-39 – 2004-2006
Scenes 40-46 – 2006-2011
Essays
Dublin: City of the Imagination – Jez Conolly and Caroline Whelan
The Graft on Grafton: Dublin's Music On-screen – Nicola Balkind
Mount Rushmore on the Liffey: Four Faces of Dublin – Jez Conolly and Caroline Whelan
Dublin: A Stage for Revolution? – Adam O’Brien
Urban Visions and Cinematic Modernities: Literary Dublin On-screen – Colm McAuliffe
Craicing the Safe: The Gangster Figure in Dublin Cinema – Clair Schwarz
Middle-Class and Proud of It? Representations of Dublin During the Celtic Tiger Era – Stephen Boyd