On January 6, 1904, spinster sisters Kate and Julia Morkan and their unmarried niece, Mary Jane, host their annual Epiphany dinner party at their townhouse in Dublin. Horse-drawn carriages arrive with guests on the snowy night. Three of Mary Jane's music students, Miss O'Callaghan, Miss Furlong, and Miss Higgins, enter, accompanied by the young bachelors Joseph Kerrigan and Raymond Bergin, who Miss Furlong formally introduces to Kate and her frail older sister, Julia.
Dan Brown, the only Protestant invited to the party, arrives next, followed by Kate's favorite nephew, Gabriel Conroy, and his wife Gretta. Kate is worried that Freddy Malins will show up drunk, and when he does, Gabriel promptly escorts the man to the restroom to sober him up. After a few more drinks with Mr. Brown, Freddy goes to talk to his mother, who lives in Scotland with her daughter, and Mrs. Malins berates him for failing to meet her for tea earlier.
The guests dance, Mary Jane performs a virtuosic piece on the piano, and a guest named Mr. Grace recites a poem he calls "Broken Vows", which is a lament of lost love, during which Gretta's eyes grow misty. When the dancing restarts, Kate pairs Gabriel with Molly Ivors, an Irish nationalist colleague of his. She chides Gabriel for writing for an English newspaper and not learning Irish, and in response, he declares he is sick of Ireland.
While Gretta is attempting to persuade Gabriel that they should go on a summer trip to the Aran Islands that Molly mentioned, Kate announces that Julia is going to sing "Arrayed for the Bridal", an operatic piece from her "concert days". Despite her warbling voice, Freddy drunkenly gushes over the performance, and Kate complains about the Pope ending her sister's singing career in the church choir when he replaced the women with boys.
When it is time to eat, Molly leaves the party to attend a union meeting. During the sumptuous feast, conversation topics range from opera to morality. Freddy reliably utters the wrong things, but despite his nerves, Gabriel gives a rousing speech praising the wonderful Irish hospitality shown by Kate, Julia and Mary Jane.
As the guests are leaving, Mrs. Malins asks Gabriel to look after Freddy when she returns to Scotland, and Gabriel awakens Mr. Brown and puts him in a carriage with the Malins. When almost everyone is gone, Bartell D’Arcy, a "celebrated tenor" who had not sung anything all evening, sings "The Lass of Aughrim" to Miss O'Callaghan, and Gabriel watches Gretta as she listens transfixed from the stairs. Her pensiveness continues in the carriage on the way to the hotel where she and Gabriel are staying the night, and she dismisses Gabriel's attempts to cheer her.
In their hotel room, Gabriel asks Gretta what she is thinking, and she explains that when she was young and lived with her grandmother in Galway, a boy she knew named Michael Furey used to sing "The Lass of Aughrim". She says she feels responsible for his death at age seventeen as, on the night before she returned to the convent in Dublin where she went to school, Michael left his sick bed and stood outside her window in the cold and rain to say goodbye, and he died a week later. Gretta cries herself to sleep, and Gabriel thinks that he has never felt love like the love Michael must have felt for Gretta and that it is better to die young and passionate than to wither and fade away like Julia, and presumably he will. Looking out the window, he imagines the snow falling all over Ireland, "upon all the living and the dead."
Tony Huston's screenplay was a fairly close adaptation of the original story, with some alterations made to the dialogue to aid the narrative for cinema audiences. The most significant change to the story was the inclusion of a new character, Mr. Grace, who, in the film, recites an English translation of the eighth-century Middle Irish poem "Donal Óg".[6][7]
Production
Weiland Schulz-Keil and Chris Sievernich, the producers of the film, had previously raised the money for Huston's 1984 film Under the Volcano. Screen rights to "The Dead" were purchased from the Joyce estate for $60,000.[1]
Filming began on 19 January 1987.[1] According to Pauline Kael, "Huston directed the movie, at eighty, from a wheelchair, jumping up to look through the camera, with oxygen tubes trailing from his nose to a portable generator; most of the time, he had to watch the actors on a video monitor outside the set and use a microphone to speak to the crew. Yet he went into dramatic areas that he'd never gone into before - funny, warm family scenes that might be thought completely out of his range. Huston never before blended his actors so intuitively, so musically."[8]
Anjelica Huston said her father remained a filmmaking virtuoso despite his ill health: "He was so sick, but he could literally do it with his eyes closed. He knew when we were going to get a take way long before the camera rolled. I mean the timing was so precise that he could tell everything, exactly how it was going to go."[9] The pressures of filming and watching her father's health deteriorate had an adverse effect on her own health, and she developed Epstein-Barr syndrome during production.[9]
Release
The Dead was released on DVD by Lionsgate on November 3, 2009, but the initial pressing was missing nearly ten minutes of footage from early in the film.[10] After word of this was posted on various websites, Lionsgate eventually corrected the mistake and released the full-length version.
Reception
The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited The Dead as one of his 100 favorite films.[11]
The Dead received mostly positive critical reviews. The film holds a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 31 reviews.[12]
In popular culture
Audio samples from this movie were used in the song 6:00 by the band Dream Theater in the 1994 album Awake.
John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote the screenplays for most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics. Many of his films involved themes such as religion, meaning, truth, freedom, psychology, colonialism, and war. He received numerous accolades including two Academy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. He also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 and the BAFTA Fellowship in 1980.
Prizzi's Honor is a 1985 American black comedy crime film directed by John Huston, starring Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner as two highly skilled mob assassins who, after falling in love, are hired to kill each other. The screenplay co-written by Richard Condon is based on his 1982 novel of the same name. The film's supporting cast includes Anjelica Huston, Robert Loggia, John Randolph, CCH Pounder, Lawrence Tierney, and William Hickey. Stanley Tucci appears in a minor role in his film debut. It was the last of John Huston's films to be released during his lifetime.
Walter Thomas Huston was a Canadian actor and singer. Huston won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, directed by his son John Huston. He is the patriarch of the four generations of the Huston acting family, including his son John, grandchildren Anjelica Huston and Danny Huston, as well as great-grandchild Jack Huston. The family has produced three generations of Academy Award winners: Walter, his son John, and granddaughter Anjelica.
Anjelica Huston is an American actress and director known for often portraying eccentric and distinctive characters.
The Grifters is a 1990 American neo-noir crime thriller film directed by Stephen Frears, produced by Martin Scorsese, and starring John Cusack, Anjelica Huston, and Annette Bening. The screenplay was written by Donald E. Westlake, based on Jim Thompson's 1963 novel of the same name. The film won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Film and was declared one of the Top 10 films of 1990 by The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.
Manhattan Murder Mystery is a 1993 American black comedy mystery film directed by Woody Allen, which he wrote with Marshall Brickman, and starring Allen, Alan Alda, Anjelica Huston, and Diane Keaton. The film centers on a married couple's investigation of the death of their neighbor's wife.
"The Dead" is the final short story in the 1914 collection Dubliners by James Joyce. It is by far the longest story in the collection and, at 15,952 words, is almost long enough to be described as a novella. The story deals with themes of love and loss, as well as raising questions about the nature of the Irish identity.
William Edward Hickey was an American actor. He is best known for his Academy Award-nominated role as Don Corrado Prizzi in the John Huston film Prizzi's Honor (1985), as well as Uncle Lewis in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) and the voice of Dr. Finkelstein in Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993).
The Crossing Guard is a 1995 American independent drama film co-produced, written, and directed by Sean Penn. The film stars Jack Nicholson, David Morse, Robin Wright and Anjelica Huston. It tells the story of Freddy Gale, a man who has been tormented for more than five years by his daughter's death in a car accident. When he finds out that the man who was responsible for the death is being released from prison, he decides to seek vengeance.
Donal Donnelly was an Irish theatre and film actor. Perhaps best known for his work in the plays of Brian Friel, he had a long and varied career in film, on television and in the theatre. He lived in Ireland, the UK and the US at various times, and his travels led him to describe himself as "an itinerant Irish actor".
Daniel Sallis Huston is an American actor, director and screenwriter. A member of the Huston family of filmmakers, he is the son of director John Huston and half-brother of actress Anjelica Huston.
The Witches is a 1990 American dark fantasy comedy horror film directed by Nicolas Roeg from a screenplay by Allan Scott, based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Roald Dahl. The film stars Anjelica Huston and Mai Zetterling. The plot features evil witches who masquerade as ordinary women and follows a boy and his grandmother, who must find a way to foil their plans of turning children into mice.
Donal McCann was an Irish stage, film, and television actor best known for his roles in the works of Brian Friel and for his lead role in John Huston's last film, The Dead. In 2020, he was listed as number 45 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
The Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series is an award given by the Screen Actors Guild to honor the finest acting achievements in Miniseries or Television Movie.
James Joyce's The Dead is a Broadway musical by Richard Nelson and Shaun Davey based upon James Joyce's short story "The Dead".
The Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female was an award presented annually by Film Independent. It is given in honor of an actress who has delivered an absolutely outstanding performance in a supporting role while working in an independent film. It was first presented in 1985 with Anjelica Huston being the first recipient of the award for her role as Gretta Conroy in The Dead. It was last presented in 2022 with Ruth Negga being the final recipient of the award for her role in Passing.
The Addams Family is a 1991 American supernatural black comedy film based on the characters from the cartoon created by cartoonist Charles Addams and the 1964 television series produced by David Levy. Directed by former cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld in his screen directing debut, the film stars Anjelica Huston, who was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance as Morticia Addams, Raul Julia as Gomez Addams, and Christopher Lloyd as Fester Addams. The film focuses on a bizarre, macabre, aristocratic family who reconnect with someone whom they believe to be a long-lost relative, Gomez's brother Fester Addams.
Jean Hanff Korelitz is an American novelist, playwright, theater producer and essayist.
Enrica Georgia Soma was an American socialite, model, and prima ballerina. She was also the wife of director John Huston and mother of their three children.
The Watcher in the Woods is a 2017 American made-for-television horror film directed by Melissa Joan Hart and starring Anjelica Huston. It is based on the 1976 novel A Watcher in the Woods by Florence Engel Randall, which had previously been adapted into the 1980 film of the same name. It premiered on Lifetime October 21, 2017.
References
1 2 3 Segaloff, Nat (2013), Final Cuts: The Last Films of 50 Great Directors, Bear Manor Media, pp.137–141
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