Un autre rivage

Another Shore is a reasonable fantasy, or modern fairy-tale. It has a strong cast, is well directed, and is based on a good book.

In hindsight it is also a socio-documentary of Dublin. It shows very vividly the post-war Dublin, a city that no longer exists.

Suspension of disbelief is not easy when the slow pacing of a film serves to draw attention to its weaknesses. The idea that a man would spend his life hanging around Dublin in the vain hope that he could save a rich old person from an accident and then become their beneficiary, struck me as not so much whimsical as downright insane. And while there is such a thing as the attraction of opposites, it is hard to credit that such an attractive and vivacious woman as the one portrayed by Moira Lister would go to the lengths she does to pursue a bone-idle dreamer who makes it clear that he is not really interested in her. The perhaps inevitable twist toward the end can't help but point up the previous inanities. Robert Beatty, good as men of action, seems miscast in a role more suited to Alec Guinness, as does Stanley Holloway in a part that could have been infinitely funnier played by Alastair Sim. There are compensations in the gentle Irish humour and some likeable character actors, but it is little surprise that Another Shore didn't make more of an impact.

Not as well known as the other Ealing Comedies and not quite in the same league. However if you like the genre you'll probably enjoy this one.

Maybe not a gem but at least a semi-precious stone.

Self-confessed waster and non-literary man Gulliver Sheils hatches a plan to escape glum 40's Ireland for the South Seas...

This beautiful little Ealing comedy is rarely seen, probably because it has no big names and is an Ealing experiment in Irish humour rather than their usual business of English. Robert Beatty, fresh from his turn as an IRA man in Odd Man Out, makes a very convincing loafer, all excuses permanently in hand - 'I'm not a literary man, at all.' The rarely seen Moira Lister shines as his middle class love interest, much more rooted to the real world and trying to make Beatty respectable enough for marriage. And there's a small turn by Wilfred Brambell looking very much like Albert Steptoe fifteen years before Albert Steptoe.

The ending is very much an English solution to an Irish problem. If only Home Rule assured us all a wage and girl...

I also wonder if Brendan Behan saw this film, through a beer glass in the late 40's in some Dublin fleapit, and decided to adopt its style. It certainly anticipates much of his take on Irish character and humour.