When you think of James Joyce, you think of the printed word. However, film adaptations were made of two of his works —Ulysses (1967) and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1977)—and both are now available from the innovative Mystic Fire Video Company of S. Burlington, Vermont.
New York film director Joseph Strick was the driving force behind both projects. Now based in his home town, he recalls travelling to Dublin 26 years ago to begin pre-production work on Ulysses.
“I went over to produce a play, Gallows Humor, by Jack Richardson, at the Olympia Theatre for the 1965 Dublin Theatre Festival,” he explains. “I lived in Dublin for some months — actually I’ve lived there for almost four years in all. It was necessary to know every street for the film, you know — Joyce said that if Dublin had been destroyed you could rebuild it from the book. “And,” he reflects, “I think you could. I read Ulysses first when I was 16. I knew this was a central literary work of the twentieth century. After that, I read everything I could put my hands on about the book-of course, there are hundreds of books written about it and you can’t get to read everything.”
Among the many fine attributes of his Ulysses production is the ensemble quality of the acting by Maureen Potter, Fionnuala Flanagan, David Kelly, Rosaleen Linehan and many others. Strick’s approach was patient, even tedious, but it paid off handsomely and he found the actors a “tremendous help” in his interpretation and realization of the book. “The pool of acting talent in Dublin is really amazing for a city that size,” he says.
“When I got to Dublin I had open casting as I always do. I gave actors and actresses the whole script and asked them to read any parts they thought would suit them. I went to the theater a lot and built social relations with everybody. When you became friends with actors, you see, you played a casting game.”
Strick first made his mark with a film adaptation of Jean Genet’s From the Balcony. “That was done well and when your first film is successful, it’s relatively easy to get your next one produced,” he contends. “So Ulysses was financed by a consortium of two companies, British Lion and Warner Reed. We had a bit of trouble because there were factions within them that didn’t want the film made.
“Finally it was made for $500,000. We had 60 speaking parts and shooting took 12 weeks. Everybody worked on minimum, all the actors accepted £100 a week. But everyone was on a percentage so as the film began to make money, they ended up with a lot more. Working with the cast was as easy as silk. It was the best experience with actors I’ve ever had. There was no nonsense, no jealousy, no back-biting. They were just hardworking people who wanted to do the job right. And they were great talents.”
One of the great talents to emerge with Ulysses was Milo O’Shea, who made his screen debut as Leopold Bloom. Strick had the option of casting Tony Curtis in the role but his inspired choice of O’Shea was typical of the director’s commitment to achieving the very essence of Joyce’s work.
Milo O’Shea, who now lives in New York, was grateful for the vote of confidence. “Naturally, if Joe Strick had taken Curtis on he would have got the production money quite easily,” he says, “but good ole Joe stuck with local people. It was unusual because it was a group effort. Nobody got paid so we all had to work on deferred wages. We all really wanted to do it. All the players were told there isn’t any money and you should only do it if you want to. They formed a company and we all had shares,” says O’Shea, adding that the subsequent success of the film rewarded the company’s enthusiasm for the project.
Strick was aware of the anomalies in Irish society regarding the works of their (later famous) son in exile. “At the time Ulysses wasn’t banned in Ireland but it wasn’t sold openly,” relates the director.
“When the film came out it did very well in London and the U.S. In fact in London I saw a copy of the book advertised in a bookstore as Ulysses—The Book of the Film!”
However even with substantial change in Irish society since the 1960’s, the film has not been championed in the way it certainly deserves.
“It was never shown in Dublin. Never has it been seen there. It was banned and then it was re-banned, and there you are,” says Strick with a shrug. “It was labelled obscene. I suppose I wasn’t surprised at the time because you couldn’t buy the book openly on the shelf. It was banned in a number of places in Britain but to have it re-banned in Ireland seven years later, that was a pain.” Milo O’Shea was equally disappointed with local opposition to the film.
“I was surprised that it wasn’t released in Ireland, because the book wasn’t banned. The censors there wanted some cuts but Joe Strick refused. It’s a wonderful adaptation because when you look at the book, you see it is filmed exactly the way it was written. Maybe at the time it was risque, but of course it’s extremely mild by today’s standards,” he adds.
Filmed in cinemascopic black and white, Ulysses runs for two hours. As Milo says, it is hardly pornographic in today’s context. In another sense, however, it is a very modern work and watching it today, 24 years after its release, one senses a timelessness about the work. It presents a magnificent collection of famous Dublin landmarks and one sequence, by the Martello Tower. on Sandymount strand, with Stephen Dedalus walking alone to Joyce’s exquisite narrative, is the nearest thing to poetry on screen.
The power and beauty of Joyce’s written word remains fully appreciated by the director, as does his sense of place.
“It seems long ago but I still have the same affection for the place and the people there because it’s a city and a culture that has sustained the great culture of the book,” says Strick. “It’s an experience of the great culture of Ireland. For example, its extraordinary language use. If you walk into any pub, the nature of the language you hear is unique in the English-speaking world.”
And for O’Shea, who was whisked off to Broadway on the strength of his performance in Ulysses, there are equally fond memories of this production. “It certainly opened doors for me,” he smiles.
And if you take the time to watch his film debut, you’ll understand why.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was made in color ten years later. Many of the Ulysses cast returned to this production with Bosco Hogan in the principal role as Dedalus. Although there are some fine performances, particularly from T.P. McKenna, and Sir John Gielgud makes an appearance as the bible-thumping cleric at Clongowes Wood College (where Joyce enjoyed a fiery baptism), Portrait does not achieve the same spirit as its predecessor. But there’s no shame in that. No shame at all — one masterpiece is enough for any man.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the May 1991 issue of Irish America. ♦
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