John Huston's last film stars, among others, his daughter Angelica, and was also written by another member of the clan. It's based on a short story that forms part of James Joyce's book 'Dubliners'. But short stories often prove just too short to sustain a full length feature film, especially when, as here, they are snapshots of a collection of characters at a point in time rather than a story per se. 'The Dead' is a nicely observed, and tolerably acted, portrait of turn-of-the-century Dublin life, but it has no plot to speak of and the pace is very slow, as the film paints its picture with a minimum of economy. Joyce is famously difficult to read, but this is not a difficult film; sadly, it is a dull one.
Review of The Dead
