Giunone e il pavone

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.

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.

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.

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.