Juno and the Paycock

Juno and the Paycock is very much like Sean O'Casey's other filmed work, The Plough and the Stars. Both plays are centered on typical Irish families in Dublin trying to survive in times of strife. Plough and the Stars takes place during the Easter Rebellion and Juno and the Paycock takes place during the Civil War after the British leave everything but Ulster.

The Boyle family who are the protagonists are not the noblest clan ever put on film, but I think a lot of us would recognize ourselves more than we care to admit. Sara Allgood is mother Boyle, nicknamed Juno who bears all kinds of tribulations for the 90 minutes of the film. She has one useless husband who'd spend all his time in the pub if he could, a son who's an amputee lost in the fighting, and a daughter who gets taken in my an English solicitor who brings news of an inheritance and then takes advantage of the daughter.

Sean O'Casey got good and slammed after these two plays were produced, showing a side of Irish life that wasn't pleasant. Today they are masterpieces.

Juno and the Paycock could probably use a more modern production now. This was one of Alfred Hitchcock's earliest sound features, but it really is a photographed stage play for the most part. When John Ford did The Plough and the Stars he very cleverly cut in a lot of newsreel footage from the Easter Rebellion giving a real feeling for the times.

What Ford did and what Hitchcock didn't do was inject typical John Ford touches in the film so it is more Ford and O'Casey. Hitchcock was hardly as well known in 1930 as opposed to the reputation he later developed. The Hitchcock touches that we all later came to know are hardly present here. In fact this really isn't a Hitchcock kind of film at all. But he did it as a contractual obligation.

Because it wasn't his kind of film, Hitchcock dismissed it. But the film is definitely true to what O'Casey was trying to convey.

Yes, it's "talky." Possibly because it's a film version of Sean O'Casey's seminal stage play about poverty, class, betrayal and death in the slums of Dublin during the Irish Civil War." Dull?" This film is taut enough that a common votive light becomes as frightening as the appearance of a ghost. And a doomed young man's descent into paranoia and babbling fear fairly bursts on the screen.

The discerning viewer will not only be rewarded with a moving story; the Hitchcock touches are there as well. A young director already finding his voice while handling serious material. The dark humor (The Trouble with Harry), the suspense that builds in silence (Lifeboat), and the immediate presence of the camera in the midst of life (Rope). All there.

Studios often resort to misleading packaging in attempts to lure the unsuspecting into renting/seeing/buying a movie that would otherwise not attract them. Those who only like their Hitchcock with a boy in mama's dress or a bird on a wire WILL hate this gem. Their loss.

After filming a few bits on the revue musical Elstree Calling, Alfred Hitchcock's next full feature directing job was on this terrible adaptation of Sean O'Casey's popular play. A long-suffering Irish family struggles to get by during the Irish Civil War. Matriarch "Juno" (Sara Allgood, who had played the role on the stage as well) tries to get layabout drunk husband Captain Boyle (Edward Chapman), whom she refers to as the "Paycock" (peacock) due to his strutting vanity, to find work to help support the family, which includes daughter Mary (Kathleen O'Regan), a worker on strike, and son Johnny (John Laurie), a former IRA fighter left bitter and resentful after an injury resulted in the loss of an arm. When the Captain learns that he's come into a generous inheritance, the family thinks that their fortunes may have finally brightened, only for tragedy to occur. Also featuring Marie O'Neill, Sidney Morgan, Dave Morris, and John Longden (the policeman boyfriend from Blackmail).

I'm not familiar with O'Casey's play, but if this film is an indication, it's awful. Hitchcock made the conscious decision to abstain from any cinematic style, and attempted to present this as a largely static filmed play, rendering the already-tedious proceedings even more unbearable. Allgood isn't bad, but the rest of the cast is forgettable at best. The original play had starred Barry Fitzgerald as the Captain, and he makes his film debut here as a speech-making rabble-rouser at the movie's start. Perhaps Hitchcock thought that Barry's Nosferatu-with-a-bad-wig look wasn't camera-friendly enough to reprise his lead role. This is definitely my least favorite Hitchcock film.

This has to be Hitchcock's least cinematic film he ever made. It's a filmed play with almost nothing cinematic to add to the mix. It's a miscalculation of the early sound era that equated theater and film because they shared a lot of the same parts. There are actors, sets, lights, and dialogue, and yet the mediums are actually really different because of the camera and the edit inherent in film.

The story itself is nothing that special. It's the counterfeit rise and then real fall of a poor Irish family in the early 20th century. The titular Juno is the female head of a small household of four with two adult children, and the paycock is the male head. Juno's level-headed while her husband, Jack, spends as much of his time drinking in a bar as possible. The girl, Mary, is courting a young man while the boy, Johnny, lost his arm in the Irish Civil War while fighting with the IRA. There's a good amount of time trying to set up all four characters, but most of the time is really dedicated to Jack, the vessel through which most of the exposition flows.

The story turns when they discover a relative has died and left them several thousand pounds. Their hardscrabble life is over. Jack's drinking away all of their extra money is done. Immediately Juno goes out and starts taking out large loans for furniture and other items around the house. Mary gets the attention of a new beau who whisks her away from her current beau, Jack feels like a big man around town, and Johnny stays remote and hidden in the background, consumed about news that started the movie of one of his friends from the IRA having gotten killed. The treatment of Johnny is the only real cinematic touch in the entire film. As conversation goes on around him, the camera pushes in to watch him at key points of the film. It's probably the only way to highlight him since he's so quiet through much of the story anyway.

The predictable thing happens and the money from the relative doesn't come through. Seriously, the second I saw Juno in the furniture shop taking on the debt, I knew there wasn't going to be any actual money for the family. The family then gets brought low. They have to sell everything from the new furniture to the old to settle their debts. Mary's new beau disappears after he impregnates her, leaving her a ruined woman in 1924 Ireland and disowned by her father. Johnny gets carried away as an informer by other members of the IRA. Jack takes the last of his money from his shoe and goes off to have a drink. Juno's left alone in the empty apartment, wailing about the fate of her family.

Now, the weirdest part of the ending is that, at least the way the film presents it, it feels like the movie itself agrees with Juno's assertion is that Jack is the source of their financial woes, but it wasn't Jack who went and took out massive loans. She was the cause of the family's newly destitute state. Jack just drank, like he always did. If the moment is supposed to be ironic, that depends on the execution of the individual performance, and I don't think the movie captures that feeling.

Anyway, in terms of the story itself, it's fine. It's not great, but it's fine. In terms of its cinematic execution, it's boring. It's a series of long, static shots that never look in the direction of the fourth wall in any of the limited environments. It's quite literally a filmed play, and I think it suffers for it.

Blackmail was in production when The Jazz Singer came out and they retooled it for sound. It was already effectively one picture that got sound added. Juno and the Paycock feels like a studio not quite sure what to do with sound finding one of the more obvious choices (a play) and just handing the assignment to one of their contract directors. I get the sense that it was filmed really quickly, possibly in less than a week, and then quickly assembled for release. This feels like chasing a fad more than compelling storytelling.

Great film! Hitchcock's second sound feature is a well done film though it isn't Hitch's usual genre. Hitch points his religion (which was Catholic) out many times in this film that it almost becomes the central theme. All scenes are well done! Acting is great too! Joxer is by far the comic relief.