Note: This discussion of The Dead was submitted to Adam Zanzie for the currently running blogothon on John Huston at Icebox Movies.
- Dinner scene from John Huston’s ‘The Dead’ based on Joyce’s ‘The Dubliners’
by Sam Juliano
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, on the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
The final paragraph of The Dead, James Joyce’s last story in his “Dubliners” collection stands today as one of the most celebrated passages in all of world literature. In John Huston’s film version, the final work of his illustrious career, the dying 81 director wisely chose to let the words speak for themselves, utilizing a voiceover with some blue-tinted wintry visuals. It’s a surrender to the power of literature, and the inability of film to bridge the gap in cinematic and texual respresentation. But it remains the most arresting sequence in the film, and perhaps in Huston’s entire career, solely as a replication of language, in a form that heightens its soulful beauty. Indeed, no filmmaker could be expected to convey the depth inherent in the literature of one of the most cerebral of all writers, and critic Jon Lanthier is right to decry the absence of the ‘longing spirit’ in this narrative. But Huston can’t be held accountable for wisely choosing to remain neutral in the film’s most critical stanza, and the “self-doubt” that Mr. Lanthier feels is violated, is actually woven into the language, oblivious to all the atmospheric tinsel dressing that still serves to provide the seasonal underpinning. If this isn’t the most memorable snow sequence in film history, it’s certainly the most provocative, and the one that skillfully employs cinematic minimalism to provide the right mood for the spoken word. (delivered here with hypnotizing power by Donal McCann, who plays Gabriel) (more…)