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This Other Eden
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This Other Eden (1959) was one of the first films produced by Emmet Dalton in the newly formed Ardmore Studios, and was the first Irish feature film to be directed by a woman, Muriel Box. The film explores the traumatic legacy of the Civil War, and in particular the impact of the death of Michael Collins on successive generations. Given that Emmet Dalton was with Collins the day he was shot, some critics have speculated that this film was an attempt to redress, even rewrite the history of that time. However, like the Louis D'Alton play on which it is based, This Other Eden is not just a critique of the past but a witty and complex satire of an emergent modern Ireland in the late 1950s. Fidelma Farley traces the genealogy of the text from Shaw's John Bull's Other Island to D'Alton's Abbey play and Box's film. Using unpublished archival material (including Muriel Box's personal diaries), Farley reclaims this little-known Irish classic by firmly rooting it in the cultural context of the Lemass era.
About the Author:
Fidelma Farley is Lecturer in Film Studies at King's College, Aberdeen.Keith Hopper teaches Literature and Film Studies for Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education and for St Clare’s International College, Oxford. He is general editor of the Ireland into Film series (2001-2007).Gráinne Humphreys is image editor for the Series. She is Head of Education at the Irish Film Institute.
Press Reviews:
This title has been reviewed jointly with "This Other Eden," by Fidelma Farley," and "December Bride," by Lance Pettitt.
"These three concise monographs initiate a collaboration between Cork University and the Irish Film Institute and a series titled "Ireland into Film." In his brilliant study of John Huston's last film (1987), an adaptation of James Joyce's last short story, "The Dead" (1907), Barry analyzes the film's tripartite structure of repetition and variation, the serenity that derives from its mix of apprehension and irresolution, and both its fidelity to and its "strong misreading" of the Joyce source. Barry attributes four major changes to the unforeseen Irish national narrative of independence, the development of the Hollywood classic style, Huston's own auteurship, and the advent of Joyce criticism--that is, Huston's changes sensitively adjust to the intervening history and the shift in medium.
Though the other two volumes focus on less-known--and lesser--films, they approach the standard Barry sets. Analyzing the politics of Ulster Protestantism in Thaddeus O'Sullivan's 1990 film of Sam Hanna Bell's novel December Bride (1951), Pettitt considers Bell's own stage and radio adaptations and David Rudkin's screenplay, the plot's source, and the film's afterlife on television and home video. Pettitt's primary focus is the historical context of both the novel and its processes of adaptation. Farley examines how Muriel Box's 1959 film provides a comedic treatment of the legacy of the Civil War and Michael Collins's death and how the film anticipates the Irish cinema's major themes of 20 years later--oppression, emigration, the power of the church, nationalist martyrdom, illegitimacy, anti-English hostility, and national identity--noting that the film mocks the Irish while depicting British romanticizing of the Irish.
Review of the Ireland into Film series: "Each writer has also done an impressive amount of new archive research, which greatly enhances the series' value as fim history and film research. The volumes give full production details and where possible, contain good background interviews with writers and directors…Each volume is lavishly illustrated so that as well as providing good detailed information on the films and an engaged debate about adaptation in general, the series is also an excellent value for the collector." (Cineaste)
"Handsome in design and including sensible stills, each of the three volumes provides a lengthy and insightful essay, full credits, and notes. This series is a splendid model for other national film institutes. All film collections." (M. Yacowar, University of Calgary CHOICE)
See the publisher website: Cork University Press
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