irisgouldianfinch Review of The Plough and the Stars

The Plough and the Stars (1936)

To fully appreciate the movie, read about the events of 1916 before watching

[7/10 · 28 June 2018]

I looked forward to watching "The Plough and the Stars" when I saw it listed on the schedule of the Talking Pictures cable channel here in the UK. I was impressed that many of the cast from the Abbey Theatre in Dublin appeared in the film. I was disappointed however by the screenplay and the filming. The Plough and the Stars tries to pay tribute to the Uprising, particularly by looking at its effects on the residents of one building. The movie shows its theatrical origins: its very stagey, and its evident that it was shot on a Hollywood backlot. I haven't read Seán O'Casey's original play, but I can see that the screenplay concentrated on the last two acts of the play, set during the Easter Rising, in April 1916. It's left to a few brief title cards to narrate that the events take place in Dublin during World War I. There's little information about what has led to the Rebellion: in the play the first two acts are set in November 1915, looking forward to the liberation of Ireland from centuries of British rule. The movie, like the play, focuses on the residents of a Dublin tenement house. There are some fine performances from the Abbey Theatre players. But the film is let down by telling too little about the historical events and the focus on Barbara Stanwyck's Nora Clitheroe and her appeals to her husband, Jack, not to join the fighting. Stanwyck tries her best but as other reviewers have noted, her Brooklyn accent is more apparent than her attempt at an Irish one. The 1930s fashions the women wear added to my feeling that the film's setting is more reminiscent of an Irish neighbourhood in 1930s New York rather than 1916 Dublin. I agree with the reviewers who have noted that the film gives little context for why Nora so desperately wants Jack to stay out of political activities she has burned the note that names him a commander. Her character comes off as a clingy young wife who isn't concerned by what is happening to Dublin and her country; she's consumed with her husband and her "own personal happiness". The script emphasises to the end that men do the fighting while the women love, then suffer. The conditions of ordinary life in Dublin are touched upon: poverty, alcoholism, disease, as in the death of the young girl from tuberculosis. The conflicts of Irish citizens over the destiny of their country aren't very deeply explored. People with different viewpoints are shown bickering, getting into fist fights in pubs and in the streets, and very little is revealed about the rebelling forces who take control of the post office, announce the forming of the Irish republic, and fight the British in doomed but legendary battles. I said to my husband when the post office was shown, "I've been there". I studied the events of the Uprising to appreciate Yeats' poem Easter 1916. I traveled to Dublin for the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday in 2004 and while I was there visited Kilmainham Gaol. Even though I used to have a poster of the Proclamation of the Republic on my wall and I could remember some of the signators, I was a little confused following the movie's portrayal of the Uprising. I thought Arthur Shields was playing James Connolly, but some reviewers said he's meant to be Patrick Pearse. I remembered however that Connolly was severely injured during the siege on the Post Office and was executed tied to a chair: Shields' character is injured and carried to his execution on a stretcher. I didn't know that there was looting during the fighting, and snipers on rooftops who tried to fight on despite the defeat of the Irish forces. I wish there were more revelations of how Dubliners reacted to the Uprising and the resulting retributions by the British. The film would have been much more powerful if it revealed more about the build up to the Uprising, more about the people who fought in it, and more about the conflicts of Nora, Jack, and their neighbours. It's a shame that the film attempts to make the events of 1916 and the people caught up in a turbulent moment of history a universal message about war, painted in gender roles of men doing the fighting and women paying the price in grief and sorrow.