Synopsis: During the 1922-1923 civil war in Ireland, the Boyle family is struggling to make ends meet. The father, "Captain" Jack Boyle, is referred to as the "Paycock" because of his tendency to strut uselessly about. Unemployed, he spends much of his time in the pub with his friend Joxer Daly. Juno, Boyle's wife and the real head of the household, attempts to keep her husband in line and food on the table. Their son Johnny, wounded during a stint with the Irish Republican Army, is moody and withdrawn, haunted by a recent act of betrayal. When Charles Bentham--a handsome young solicitor and possible suitor for the daughter Mary--announces that the family has come into a substantial inheritance, they believe that their fortunes have turned. However, Bentham's sudden disappearance shatters their illusions and pushes the family to the brink of disintegration.

Sean O'Casey's 1924 play Juno and the Paycock is a classic of modern Irish theater. As a tragedy--or more properly speaking, a tragicomedy--it was distinctive in that it used political events of the very recent and painful past in Ireland as its background. In 1922, a treaty between the United Kingdom and Ireland gained official recognition for the Free State of Ireland, though the United Kingdom retained control over Northern Ireland. Between June 1922 and April 1923, a civil war broke out between those who supported the treaty and those who demanded more thoroughgoing independence. The term "Irregulars" in O'Casey's play refers to the anti-treaty faction of the Irish Republican Army. In that respect, the Boyle family can be seen as a metaphor for a wounded Irish society.

Sara Allgood, the actress who originated the role of Juno, here recreates it on the screen, lending her character a sense of humor and a resilience that makes her tower over the male characters, who are all depicted as inadequate in various ways. The inimitable Barry Fitzgerald, who originated the role of Captain Boyle, appears as "the Orator" in a new prologue that O'Casey wrote specifically for the film to help clarify the political background of the play. Juno and the Paycock is also noteworthy for its colorful use of language, from Joxer Daly's repeated use of the epithet "darlin'" to Captain Boyle's own comic malapropisms--among them, his reference to Joxer as a "prognosticator" and his famous declaration, "The whole world's in a terrible state of chassis!"

Sean O'Casey (1880-1964) spent much of his life troubled by ill health, especially by poor eyesight. His first three major plays--The Shadow of a Gunman (1923), Juno and the Paycock (1924) and The Plough and the Stars (1926)--are set in the Dublin tenements in which he was raised. The first two were tremendous artistic and financial successes for Dublin's Abbey Theatre, but The Plough and the Stars, which many regard as his masterpiece, sparked a riot because of its salty language and O'Casey's unsentimental--though basically sympathetic--treatment of working class Irish people and their response to the Easter Rising of 1916. In an act of self imposed exile, O'Casey moved to London in 1926 and remained in England for the rest of this life. Besides his plays, he is renowned for a series of autobiographies written in an extravagant, experimental prose style. While O'Casey viewed the cinema as essentially inferior to the theater, according to Hitchcock biographer Patrick McGilligan the playwright had also outlined a project entitled "The Green Gates"--about a day in the life of Hyde Park. That film project unfortunately never materialized, so O'Casey developed it into a stage play instead.

Alfred Hitchcock genuinely admired O'Casey's play and saw it multiple times on the London stage. The film is largely faithful to the play's dialogue and most of it remains confined to the main room of the Boyles' tenement, as in the play. However, Hitchcock does open the film out with street scenes and purely cinematic elements such as the recurring image of a window looking out onto the street, accompanied by the sound of machine-gun fire off screen. Extending the experiments of Blackmail (1929) even further, the director uses fairly sophisticated sound effects for an early British sound film, including a gramophone recording of the song "If You're Irish, Come into the Parlor" that was simulated by a singer and orchestra off stage.

But the most elaborate use of sound is unquestionably Hitchcock's staging of the end of Act II, the scene where Captain Boyle, Juno, Joxer and Maisie Madigan listen to the gramophone then attend the funeral for Mrs. Tancred's son on the street below. While they are absent, the "Mobilizer" enters the apartment and orders Johnny to attend a "meeting." Hitchcock described the setup as follows: "In one corner was a crowd of people talking in low voices; in another, half a dozen people marking time; in a third, a stage-hand was beating a sofa with two canes to make machine-gun fire. The fourth corner was filled by a propman singing the tune through a megaphone." Improvements in sound technology--among them more sensitive microphones and the ability to mix different tracks--have long since made such effects relatively easy to accomplish today. However, Hitchcock's execution of the scene demonstrates his eagerness to experiment with the possibilities of sound film as much as his desire to be faithful to the written stage directions in O'Casey's play.

Later in his career Hitchcock would occasionally dismiss the film, most famously in Francois Truffaut's book-length series of interviews. However, Juno and the Paycock was actually fairly well received during its initial run in England. For instance, James Agate of the Tatler characterized it as "very nearly a masterpiece." When the film was released in the U.S., the reviewer for the New York Times warmly praised the lead actors but complained about the sound recording quality and the play's odd mixture of comedy and tragedy. While Juno and the Paycock ultimately doesn't transcend its origins as a filmed play and thus is usually thought of lesser interest for Hitchcock fans than, say, Blackmail, it is of considerable historical value as a rare film adaptation of a classic modern play, and as a record of the great Sara Allgood's signature role as an actress.

Producer: John Maxwell
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay: Alma Reville, adapted from the play by Sean O'Casey
Photography: J. J. Cox
Editing: Emile de Ruelle
Art Direction: J. Marchant
Principal Cast: Sara Allgood (Juno Boyle), Edward Chapman (Capt. Jack "Paycock" Boyle), Sidney Morgan (Joxer Daly), John Longden (Charles Bentham), Kathleen O'Regan (Mary Boyle), John Laurie (Johnny Boyle), Donald Calthrop (Needle Nugent), Maire O'Neil (Maisie Madigan), Dave Morris (Jerry Devine), Fred Schwartz (Kelly), Dennis Wyndham (Mobilizer), Barry Fitzgerald (Orator).
BW-85m.

by James Steffen