Finally got to see the rocky road to Dublin, Peter Lennon's excellent documentary from 1968 which takes a critical look at the state of Ireland 50 years after the 1916 rising. The film was beautifully shot by Raoul Coutard, the nouvelle vague DP of Truffaut and Goddard. He shot Breathless and Alphaville as well as Z and for some reason agreed to shoot rocky road after being approached by Lennon, who had never made a film before, in France where Lennon worked for the UK Guardian.
The film is enjoying a new life of festival and university screenings after being restored by the film institute here in Eirsatz. Its a real time capsule and reminiscient of some of the finest 60s verite work by Marker and Goddard, quite like the vertov stuff Goddard et al did in France and the US at that time.
Lennons concern in making the film was prompted by what he saw as the failure of the revolutionaries of 1916 to deliver the republic they had announced. instead 50 years later ireland was a backwater of "urban peasants" as Sean O faolain describes them in the film, intimidated and controlled by a crypto fascist clergy who dominated all aspects of life in the country. As Lennon narrates at the opening of the film "This is an attempt to reconstruct in images the plight of an island community which survived nearly 700 years of English occupation and then nearly sank under the weight of its own heroes -and clergy". This is wonderfully captured through clips of young boys in Synge street Christian brothers school listing the consequences of original sin: poverty, stupidity and death among other things. Departure from chastity resulted in even more appalling consequences, according to another 7 or 8 year old.
The film spends a couple of days with Father Michael Cleary, promoted by the church at the time as a guy in touch with the young, a singing and dancing man of god who got it and provided a contrast to the the likes of Cardinal Spellman, who denounced the governement for departing from a tight American anti chinese line at the UN ultimately leaving the state in a position to the right of the pope on international matters.
Cleary was already having an affair with his house keeper, a young woman who he had met while ministering in the orphanage where she was growing up, though this would not become known for three decades. By this time she had already given up their son for addoption. Like many priests of the day he had a peculiar sexual appetite for the extremely vulnerable, and a filthy mind to boot, fed no doubt by the confessions of sinning housewives racked by guilt at practicing coitus interuptus as a means of avoiding further pregnancies. One woman recounting this experience in the film is advised by her priest to move out of the bed she shared with her husband so as to avoid inflaming his evil passions.
The censorship of the country is also explored with a scrolling list of the dozens of authors who had been banned up to that time though one of the most endearing characters is, ironically, the censor himself who is a sharp old codger and clearly the bishops choice for the job. At least he's aware that he is living in the past.
But this is most interesting, at a time when the world is in flames, the 6 counties would explode within the year and a radical youth anti war movement was pronounced around the globe, in ireland there was nothing, seemingly nothing. Considering that among those who had led the 1916 rising were many socialists and poets it seemed that these traditions had been erased. Most of the 1916 leaders were executed leaving only the most appalling conservatives around to take the reins of power after the anglo irish war. Among those were Eamonn de Valera and Michael Collins, as well as monarchists like Arthur Griffith, the founder of Sinn Fein. Both Collins and De Valera were quite antagonistic to democratic ideas and both were deeply conservative religious fanatics. So conservative was de valera that he insisted on all the men under him surrendering to the British after the '16 rising instead of, as had happened elsewhere, men being given the choice to escape particularly if they had young families.
he was spared the executioners bullet by virtue of his American birth. Griffith of course refused to participate in the rising keeping Sinn Fein out of it though in popular imagination it became known as the Sinn Fein rising.
most interesting, apart from the delicate balance between a rejection of the sheepish nature of the Irish public with the quite disgusting cynicism of the ruling gangs and the real affection of the film maker pronounced by Couthards beautiful photography is that the film showed at the Cannes festival in 1968. It was the last to screen before truffaut and Goddard closed the festival in sympathy with the striking workers and students, "we are talking about revolution while you are talking about tracking shots and close ups" spat Goddard at lennon. So the film was part of something much more in Cinema history that being just about the only irish film of the decade, certainly the only one with any association with the new wave.
While the film screened in one cinema in Dublin for several weeks it has never been broadcast in Ireland and has recieved, even now, only derisory support from the film board. This will surprise noone who has watched anything funded by them though. While films are being made the island still has no cinema.
IN '68 the film was screened in the occupied renault factory and in the Sorbonne, where louis malle described it as one of the most important 3 or 4 documents the cinema has given us. 36 years later its shown at a few screeings in COrk and then, last night, in Belfast, which feels a little like it did on the eve of the Irish war. Watching the film there i couldnt help feeling that really, particularly in the north, we havent come that far. Still the place is dominated by social conservatives with an unhealthy love of organised religion. A good number of the unionist/loyalist leaders are actually men of the cloth and among the republicans crucifixes, holy water and daily mass going are more common than not.
See this film if you can, the sound track is a cracker. The dubliners with luke kelly singing.
