I Was Happy Here

I enjoyed this film. The black and white photography was very smooth and pleasant. The opening credits were quite impressive too; the photography reminding me distinctively of the TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD opening. The wind music score that re-appeared throughout the film was quite beautiful as well.

Sarah Miles plays Cass Langdon - a well-mannered free spirit, wanderer-type - who, after a fight with her conservative, upper-crust husband, returns to the sleepy, old Irish seaside township of her birth. Her Londoner, "ordered and settled" husband who "was not brought up in such an Irish bog!" is soon on his way to the village to persuade her to come back away with him. For Cass, this trip back to her homeland is a period of convalescence. Much of the film is spent in flashbacks, remembering her childhood sweetheart Colin, her uneasy marriage with Matthew, and the time she spent abroad in London before meeting him.

For the most part these flashbacks are done without dissolves - which is good, because if used they would most definitely have compromised the artistic nature of the non-linear story telling. There's a very good use of close ups, and the dolly work also helps the photography. It's also good to see no rear projection - particularly in the scenes with the cars or bicycles - which is so prevalent in other British films in the early 60's.

This 1965 British film, set in Country Clare, Ireland, and London, is a coming-of-age story which, though firmly set in the values and attitudes of its day, attains a timeless quality by virtue of an intelligent, fluent script and fine ensemble playing by a top-notch cast. Sarah Miles plays the girl who leaves an Irish fishing village for London, hoping to be joined by her boyfriend. Desperately lonely, she is befriended by a budding doctor. The story, which I won't spoil by going into more detail, is simple and universal. Anyone who has been in love can relate to it. The film-making style shows distinct influences of the French 'New Wave' (it is also cited as an example of British 'New Wave'; there were lots of waves breaking over cinema at the time) but uses these techniques judiciously and is innovative in its own right. The score by William Alwyn is highly effective and the black-and- white photography lovingly captures the magnificent sky and seascapes of the Irish coast. It is a quiet, almost contemplative film, that uses flashbacks extensively. The weaving of these time transitions is very good, on the whole, but audiences that prefer a linear narrative and buckets of action are not likely to be satisfied. For me, I rate the film highly because I know I already want to watch it again.

The settings are by the sea, it's a small fishing village, where Sarah Miles had her happiest days with a young fisherman who also loved her, but she went on her way to London to get caught up by a young doctor, who made her pregnant and married her. She knew it was wrong from there beginning, she always just wanted to get away, and finally she left him in the middle of a gloomy Christmas dinner and went back to her village, where she found her fisherman again, who was now engaged to be married. Her husband comes after her and finds her, but there is no settlement. Sarah Miles is left alone again feeling pity for both her men, while she is still happy enough, she says, to her landlord Cyril Cusack, who sees and understands everything but who also is content enough. It's an ordinary story but filmed with great sensitivity and finesse in its fine poetry of pictures and moods, nostalgic flashbacks and irrevocable realism. Nothing really happens, it's just how love and life works, for good, and for worse, and you will get over it.

It is a sad, romantic, but really happy little film that has a wonderful feel of the Irish sky and sea and the beach and the pubs, that sometimes open and sometime never close. It is Sarah Miles that is very good the way she looks and those sad eyes and lovely Irish lilt. Desmond Davis had a great look of this and so much better than his, Girl with Green Eyes (1964) but also good in Smashing Time (1967). Cyril Cusack made more than 100 TV and films was in, Fahrenheit 451 (1966), The Taming of the Shrew (1967) and of course, The Day of the Jackal (1973). It was Sarah Miles the beautiful star of the time and was very similarly like Julie Christie. She was in The Servant (1963) and Blow-Up (1966) and another one I really loved was The Sailor Who Fell Grace With the Sea (1976) with Kris Kristofferson.

The lovely Sarah Miles at her best, with good support (underplayed for once) from Cyril Cusack. Irish girl goes to almost-swinging London, marries rugger-bugger English doctor, finds life unbearable boring and runs home to get in touch with her land and her people, including the boyfriend she left behind. Boyfriend still miffed, doctor in pursuit. A sense of place is important, and Miles plays the carefree girl wonderfully in numerous flashbacks. Story told in non-linear time, ie chopping from Irish girlhood, penniless entrapment in big city, to return and denouement.