Avis des utilisateurs

Most people don't like this film, not realizing that a) it's one of Hitchcock's very first British films, on a low budget; and b) that it's not a thriller or suspense film, but based on a masterfully written comic tragedy by Irish playwright Sean O'Casey. Very faithful to the play, this film is fairly well acted, and fairly well cast. Though most seem to think Sara Allgood is the standout as Juno, I particularly like Sidney Morgan's wonderful portrayal as Joxer, and Edward Chapman's performance as Captain Boyle is also very good,

But writing and acting aside, this film is not without its flaws. Obviously on a tight and tiny budget, the quality of film and sound are fairly awful, and Hitchcock's direction and cinematography is less than stellar, with a rash of low shots and cut-off heads.

Still, the poor quality of film and filming can be excused for budgetary constraints, and the fact that this is such an early Hitchcock film. Definitely worth watching if you like the play, which I do, but don't expect and thrills or shocks; this is a talk-heavy play about Irish troubles during the uprising with some very sharp and wicked humour and some very tragic commentary. Not Hitchcock's best by a longshot, but severely underrated. 6/10.

Sean O'Casey's play does not translate to the screen very well. A bit talky, it may have worked fine on stage, but it is not movie material. Still Hitchcock has moments where he shows his genius as a filmmaker. There are camera shots and editing cuts that tell more of the story than any of O'Casey's dialog.

Still, I would not recommend this film for anyone who is new to the work of Alfred Hitchcock. Save this one for the advance class, and let the beginners view "The Secret Agent," "Shadow of a Doubt," "Vertigo," and "Psycho," just to name a few.

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.

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.

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.

Good story, but poorly executed. Juno and the Paycock is another less than stellar early film from Alfred Hitchcock. The story is actually quite interesting, revolving around a poor Irish family who begin putting on airs when they think they are about to inherit a fortune. Comedy and drama blend nicely in this script, letting us get to know the characters in a lighthearted setting before descending into full fledged tragedy. Sara Allgood and Edward Chapman head up a good ensemble cast as the long suffering wife and lazy, drunkard husband, respectively. The film also has a rare edgy quality for its time, as the actors were able to get away with some swearing and irreverence. Sex, however, was still the one thing that could not be talked about. You have to figure out for yourself that the daughter has been knocked up by her boyfriend because they will never just say so. The downfall of the film is that Hitchcock seems to have been uninterested in his own subject. The film feels cheaply thrown together with none of the director's usual style or active storytelling. The spars camera work makes the movie seem like little more than a filmed recording of the stage play it was adapted from. With a little imagination this could have been much better.

Sean O'Casey's controversial stage play about a shanty Irish family caught up in the times of Ireland's fight for independence get's a rough going over in this Alfred Hitchcock screen adaptation. With it's primitive soundtrack O'Casey's eloquence and dark wit is often garbled and indecipherable. Master of suspense Hitchcock seems content to just film the stage play with about half a dozen set ups and few camera movements. Performance wise he enlists stage vets from The Vic and The Abbey who en masse chew the scenery to pieces. Trained to reach the audience in the rear of the balcony the players are ill suited to the nuance required in this new art form and they remain over the top from start to finish.

Hitch does display flashes of brilliance with the new medium of sound in a couple of scenes involving the informer family member wracked with guilt and paranoia but for the most part he plays it safe, allowing his thespians to recite O'Casey's lyrical dialogue which technical bugs trample.

Dated as it may be Juno and the Paycock performed on stage can be a powerful theatre going experience with its memorable characters and well balanced tragi-comic theme that rails against social hypocrisy. I'm not sure a "sophisticated" film version today would do the play the justice that it receives's within the intimacy of the stage where one gets the feeling your sitting in the Boyles parlor. Suffice to say the 1929 version leaves you in the basement looking for a light switch.

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.

This is a very early sound movie; therefore, many of the technical aspects are very primitive, so you must use a bit of patience. But, some of the acting is top-notch, and of course, the play is a classic of the Irish stage. The two standouts as actors is the man who played the outlandish sponge and hanger-on, Jockster, and Sara Algood (sp?) always a dynamite character actor--as Juno, she shines. All in all, this Hitchcock adaption of the play is well done. "Juno and the Paycock" eventually goes in a direction that you would not expect, but in any event, the way in which it looks at Dublin's poor is rather unflinching.

Juno and the Paycock isn't an easy film to watch. The long takes and drawn-out speeches (in which nothing is really said) test even the most sturdy attention span. And the silly beginning feels mismatched with the solemn ending. Maybe it works better on a stage, but this is far from Hitchcock's best work.

Having been a Hitchcock fan for forty years I have not been able to see this until now, thanks to a very cheap and poor quality DVD.

This straightforward fill of Sean O'Casey's play turns out to be a powerful piece of admittedly primitive early film-making. This is from a time when sound editing was impossible - scenes had to be taken in long takes with four cameras and cut ins added in - very much like studio TV.

I am shocked that one reviewer refers to bad photography with heads cut off. That's the bad transfer on the disc which cuts quite a lot of the image, often cutting of heads. If we could see a good print this would be powerful stuff with, surprisingly, a lot of very strong Hitchcock moments - including a ma in atrench coat waiting in the street - to execute JOhnny who was betrayed his republican group. It's also an extraordinarily authentic picture of an intensely catholic world. Ireland is still suffering from internal fighting but the is celebrating independence - but at the same time these people suffer from extreme judgemental attitudes. The rejection of the pregnant daughter by her previous boyfriend is simple and chilling.

We desperately need restorations of Hitchcock's pre 1934 films. The silents are excellent when you see them pristine. The copies in circulation are only hints of what they are really like. In its way a key work in Hitchcock's oeuvre. He may have dismissed it in the TRuffaut interviews, but take that with a pinch of salt. He avoids any mention of Fritz Lang influence too - and yet if you see Spione, M, or the Mabuse films you see how much he owed to Lang.

It is hard to believe that this is an Alfred Hitchcock film after all. The movie is based on Irish playwright Sean O'Casey's play of the same name about an Irish family named the Boyles. This is a faithful stage to screen adaptation with some minor changes. Still the cast are members of the Irish Abbey Theatre Company and have performed the play on stage together hundred times. The cast is first rate. Real life sisters Sara Allgood and Maire O'Neill are excellent especially O'Neill in an unforgettable performance. She was such a scene stealer. The family learns that their an inheritance only disappointment in the end. The film is unlike Hitchcock's other films but yet it is worth watching an early stage to screen adaptation with the original cast of players who originated their roles on stage. That is how to do a stage to screen adaptation with the original cast.

A stagy, extremely talky and deadeningly dull early Hitchcock film. If you thought that this director was unable to make a film so dull that it's practically impossible to sit through, this one will force you to re-examine your opinion. This failure is forgivable, of course: Hitchcock was still very young, and he was working with unsuitable (for him) material, on a very low budget. But the picture is definitely not worth seeing, unless you're a Hitchcock completist.

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.

I remember this sad hopeless play from college theatre classes. You start with a down and out family, throw in alcoholism and ennui and you have this story. The characters live under the black cloud that is Ireland at this time. They have a chance to get out (though it proves false) and instead of making sure of things they go on a binge and make their situation even worse. The movie has good performances and looks pretty good, but O'Casey has written such a downer, it's hard to enjoy it. Also, Hitchcock really didn't put a signature on it, other than the fact that it is well filmed. The oppressiveness of the dark shades of gray and the sunken eyes of the performers is pretty well presented. The play is plea to God to give them something for once, but it says that these people are incapable of receiving. It could use a ray of sunshine. The final scene makes a person want to cry because from what I've read, this was not atypical for these people at this time.

The film is about as dry as stale bread. It does hold my interest to a degree but it's not the greatest film nor the worst film that Hitchcock has made (in my opinion). From what I've read, not even Alfred wanted liked this film - he didn't even want to make it but he did.

It's not an unwatchable film but it is not a good movie. It's more of an interest to Hitchcock fans and maybe some film students - that's about it. There might be another small crowd interested in this one, those that are interested in all things Irish.

IDK what this film is missing really, maybe a bit more comedy to make it "spicy" or entertaining. A bit quicker pace couldn't hurt either.

Not bad but not good - It's in the middle ground for me.

Note: IMDb has this film listed as 1929 while most other sources have this film listed as 1930.

3/10

I can't believe I actually sat through this movie. I am watching all my Hitchcock DVDs from the Lodger (1927) to Family Plot (1976). Both the Lodger and the Farmer's Wife (1928) were really entertaining. This however the third in my marathon was spectacularly awful. It is the only Hitchcock movie I've seen that I can say is bad. Although the story tells a moral tale of how greed and apathy lead to bad consequences, the way Hitchcock goes about it is passive to say the least. For the most part the camera remains positioned in a room of characters giving sentimental drawn out pieces of irrelevant dialogue. Although being an early talkie this is understandable. The film is therefore drawn out and unbearable to modern audiences. Having spent almost the entire length of the film confined to the apartment of our protagonists the viewer is left we a sickening feeling of claustrophobia, allowing a cheer of joy when the film finally ends.

I give this film a 2/10 and not a 1 purely because it contains a moral importance. Nonetheless unless you're an absolute Hitchcock fanatic (like myself) I wouldn't dare tell anyone to watch this film. It is so bad its not even fit for use in torture methods!!!

... but Hitchcock was ashamed of his direction. In his book by Truffaut, he declared he couldn't be inspired by this good play. So if you want to see an early inspired Hitchcock, jump on "Blackmail" and forget that one, I recognized only two pure Hitchcock shots, that's very light.

Usually I write an objective summary of the plot before I review a film but here it's quite difficult because there's not much plot to describe. The film is set in Ireland's civil war in the 1920s and involves a working class family that experiences a large windfall through an inheritance. Other than that it seems to involve the family sitting around complaining about things, being confused by things and wondering who is at the door!

The film is also very dialogue-heavy, with much of it indecipherable. So you have about 90 minutes of largely meaningless, droning on, wall-to-wall dialogue. It's like 90 minutes of nails-across-a-blackboard ear torture.

It's certainly a far cry from what you'd expect from the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. Admittedly he hadn't quite hit his stride as a thriller-director but his previous film, Blackmail, was his first talkie, was a tense drama and contained many of the qualities that would later be his trademark.

It is thus an incredible disappointment to watch this film, something that's clearly his worst film. There's a handful of his films I haven't yet watched but one of those would have to be monumentally, horrendously bad to be worse than this.

Gee, maybe that's not fair. Maybe it's just that the Irish have a better heritage of articulating hard times. "Juno and The Paycock" is the epitome of tales of woe and suffering from the Irish urban poor during The Troubles of the early 20th century. The family has all the stereotypical travails: Joblessness due to alcoholism, joblessness due to labor union strikes, involvement with the Republican Army, and all these problems fall across the shoulders of the long-suffering mother, Juno.

If such a thing can be imagined, it gets worse. The family believes they will fall into some money, so they (foolishly) run up debts. This begins the 'comic' part of the film's tragi-comedy structure. When hopes prove to be false the family is devastated.

A relentlessly downbeat story that sees an interlude of clearly false hopes followed by a tragic ending, is considered a chestnut of the Irish playwright Sean O'Casey. For viewers, anyone who can't understand the thick Irish brogues on the equipment used in an early talkie will have no chance to understand the dialogue.

Worst of all the nature of the story really doesn't suit the talents of even a young Alfred Hitchcock. Even by that point in his career, he had begun to make compelling suspense pictures and this film is not in his wheelhouse. Even taking exception for budget and circumstances that would have obligated him to take on this film as an early sound project, "Juno and The Paycock" does little to distinguish the work of Sean O'Casey and even less for Hitchcock. It should be avoided, even by Hitchcock completists.

Extremely well-done film, crisp and merciless. The B/W despair of the Dublin slum, and Juno, the woman trying to cope with two adult children in a time of Civil War are presented sharply. The prospect of a small inheritance leads "Capt." Boyle into wild extravagance, shadowed by his hysterical son, who has lost an arm in the conflict, and is hiding, terrified, by the vigil light. The daughter Mary's innocent ambition to escape the tenement is betrayed twice. Two young men die in the embattled streets. The end is one great cry: "Take away our hearts o'stone and give us hearts o' flesh." (NB: If you're expecting a jolly Honeymooners sitcom, skip this!)

"Juno And The Paycock" is the lowest-rated film or TV episode directed by Alfred Hitchcock on IMDb, and although I have yet to see several of his films, this is probably accurate. However, the 4.8 rating still seems way too generous; the film is absolutely unwatchable - and unlistenable: approximately 80% of the dialogue is indecipherable. The play itself will not mean anything to anyone who is not a) Irish and b) born before 1880, but the moviemaking is deadening as well: there are no traces of Hitchcock's personality whatsoever. Sorry but I've got to give this a 0 out of 4, as I can't think of a single reason for someone to watch it.