Analysis: there have been many stagings of Joyce's January 6th-set short story, but John Huston's 1987 film continues to lead the way
As his health was waning, the Oscar-winning director John Huston took on the challenge of bringing James Joyce's short-story, The Dead, to the big screen. 36 years on, the film stands as a great legacy not just of Huston’s style and craft as a director, but as a means of capturing an atmospheric and effective portrait of Joyce’s story and of the residual memory of life and death, love and loss that permeates through the characters’ lives.
The Dead was published as part of Joyce’s collection, Dubliners, in 1914. Set on January 6th, the feast of the Epiphany, The Dead features a festive dinner gathering at a house in Usher's Ireland, Dublin, and which centres on the present lives and former loves of married couple, Gabriel (Donal McCann) and Gretta Conroy (Anjelica Huston). The film was the director's final work before he died on August 28th 1987 and It was nominated for two Academy awards, Best Screenplay, for Tony Huston, and Best Costume Design by Dorothy Jeakins.
Trailer for The Dead
The story of The Dead centres on a dinner party, where the guests are regaled with music, dancing, food, and stories. It is the famous concluding scene, which places Gabriel and Gretta at Dublin's Gresham Hotel for which the film is arguably best remembered for. Huston’s setting and direction presents the atmospheric scene, dimly lit, populated with shadows, aptly filling the private space of Gabriel and Gretta’s hotel room with allusions to the ghosts of former lovers who still intrude in the present:
Gretta: "I’m thinking about that song The Lass of Aughrim.
Gabriel: "What should that song make you cry?
Gretta: I’m thinking about a person long ago who used to sing that song."
Gabriel: Who was that person long ago?
Greta explains that she is talking about Michael Furey, a "delicate" boy, she used to go walking with in Galway. "He’s dead", she confirms in sadness, "He died when he was only 17. Isn’t it a terrible thing to die as young as that?"
Frank Patterson's performance of The Lass of Aughrim from The Dead
The Huston Family archive at University of Galway Library contains a vast array or records from the film production. These include drafts and final edits of the screenplay by the director’s son, Tony; correspondence from the film producers discussing edits to the final text; watercolour and sketches of storyboards for costume and set design of the film; production stills and international press coverage of the film.
The archival drafts of the screenplay reveal the painstaking task and work by Tony Huston in making Joyce’s language, imagery, and atmosphere of the story into a workable and visual form for his father to then manifest and direct on screen. The lead performances of Anjelica Huston (the director's daughter) and Donal McCann capture the undulating emotions of their characters throughout the evening at the crowded party to the quiet isolation of their hotel room, as they navigate their own pasts, identity, nationality, and indeed, future lives together.
The symbolism of the snow, covering traces and tracks of outside world in a delicate cover, are clearly represented in the design artworks in the Huston archive. The exterior shots and locations, including the Gresham Hotel are also drawn and in the archive, rooting the film in Joyce’s Dublin, though in reality the film was shot in Los Angeles.
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From RTÉ Archives, Donal McCann talks to Gay Byrne about working with John Huston on The Dead on an April 1988 episode of The Late Late Show
In an interview in April 1988 with Gay Byrne on The Late Late Show, McCann recounted his memories of working with John Huston. "We agreed very early on that talking about acting or making films was a goddam waste of time and we just got on and did it really. Instead, their conversations while making the film centred around racehorses, hunting and Galway."
Gabriel’s closing speech was parodied in an episode of Father Ted. In Grant Unto Him Eternal Rest, Fr. Jack (supposedly) died from ingesting floor polish. In one scene, Fr. Ted speaks wistfully of the snow falling all over the islands, the graveyard, and on the living. Before completing the famous line, Jack appears, back from the dead once more and Ted faints in shock.
The Dead was also adapted for the stage by Hugh Leonard, as part of The Quick and the Dead, a double bill of short plays by Leonard. These were staged at the Olympia Theatre and produced by Gemini Productions as part of the 1967 Dublin Theatre Festival. Directed by Barry Cassin, The Dead starred Jim Norton as Gabriel, Maureen Toal as Greta, and also Anna Manahan and Brenda Fricker.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drama On One, Stephen Rea reads James Joyce's The Dead
In 1999, a Broadway musical adaptation of the story featured Christopher Walken and Blair Brown as the husband and wife pair of Gabriel and Greta and was produced by Richard Nelson and Shaun Davey. Both talked about Huston's 1987 film adaptation as being the key inspiration for them to move Joyce’s story onto the stage.
Such complexities of age, memory, identity and love/loss were also key to the 2012 stage adaptation at the Abbey Theatre by Frank McGuinness. Directed by Joe Dowling, the play starred Stanley Townsend and Derbhle Crotty in the lead roles, (as well as Ingrid Craigie who was previously part of Huston's 1987 film cast).
From the page to the stage, part of what makes The Dead such a celebrated story over a century later is the power of what is unsaid – the unseen lives and histories of the dead – those who are loved and lost and who still retain a dual presence, both among the living and the dead.
The Huston Family Archive at University of Galway Library Archives can be searched online here.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
