It's possible that if John Ford's health had permitted him to finish Young Cassidy we might have gotten a better version of how Sean O'Casey saw himself in this world. The film is based on his autobiography where he himself decided to rename the central character Cassidy. I'm guessing that was to allow for a bit of dramatic license. As if anybody with the slightest familiarity in Irish history isn't going to know who wrote The Plough And The Stars.
O'Casey who was somewhat of a curmudgeon in his old age as was John Ford might have appealed to one another, one curmudgeon to another. In fact Ford directed the film version of The Plough And The Stars, a much underrated film which had a little too much Ford and not enough O'Casey in it.
Anyway Ford dropped the project and acclaimed British cinematographer Jack Cardiff picked up the ball. The usual roughhouse Ford type monkeyshine comedy could have been dropped in a few places during this film, might have given it a lift.
O'Casey(Cassidy) comes from a hardscrabble background, a brilliant mind though that couldn't be kept down by poverty. He's one of several offspring in a house presided over by the wise and patient Flora Robson in a part that Jane Darwell would have done in America a generation earlier. She and Sian Phillips as his sister deliver some fine performances.
The title role is played by Rod Taylor who was at the apex of his career at the time. He does a splendid job in capturing the youthful vitality and intelligence of a laboring man with a vision and a voice to capture what he sees. In fact his vision too accurate for some and I'm not talking about the occupying English.
O'Casey as played by Taylor reminded me almost hauntingly of George Gershwin as he was portrayed by Robert Alda in Rhapsody in Blue. Gershwin like O'Casey was so driven by his art that in the end no woman ever bonded with him intellectually. O'Casey as well is ultimately driven so by his need to express that the women are both attracted and feel inadequate for him. Everyone from young Julie Christie as a tart, to prim bookseller Maggie Smith in two of their earliest screen roles. The end when Smith tells Taylor she can't go on with him is a haunting one.
I've never been to Dublin so I'm not sure how much it has changed from the years of the Rebellion to the Sixties, let alone a new century. But Jack Cardiff's cinematographer's eye does a great job in capturing same. Ditto in fact for the scenes in the Irish countryside which are as beautifully photographed as Ford's classic The Quiet Man.
Sean O'Casey can well lay claim to being Ireland's first man of letters and that's bucking some heavy competition like George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde for instance. But those two worthy writers got their main success abroad, O'Casey wrote and told the story of his people in the fashion of the hated Cromwell, 'warts and all.' His story is Ireland's at the birth of freedom.
O'Casey who was somewhat of a curmudgeon in his old age as was John Ford might have appealed to one another, one curmudgeon to another. In fact Ford directed the film version of The Plough And The Stars, a much underrated film which had a little too much Ford and not enough O'Casey in it.
Anyway Ford dropped the project and acclaimed British cinematographer Jack Cardiff picked up the ball. The usual roughhouse Ford type monkeyshine comedy could have been dropped in a few places during this film, might have given it a lift.
O'Casey(Cassidy) comes from a hardscrabble background, a brilliant mind though that couldn't be kept down by poverty. He's one of several offspring in a house presided over by the wise and patient Flora Robson in a part that Jane Darwell would have done in America a generation earlier. She and Sian Phillips as his sister deliver some fine performances.
The title role is played by Rod Taylor who was at the apex of his career at the time. He does a splendid job in capturing the youthful vitality and intelligence of a laboring man with a vision and a voice to capture what he sees. In fact his vision too accurate for some and I'm not talking about the occupying English.
O'Casey as played by Taylor reminded me almost hauntingly of George Gershwin as he was portrayed by Robert Alda in Rhapsody in Blue. Gershwin like O'Casey was so driven by his art that in the end no woman ever bonded with him intellectually. O'Casey as well is ultimately driven so by his need to express that the women are both attracted and feel inadequate for him. Everyone from young Julie Christie as a tart, to prim bookseller Maggie Smith in two of their earliest screen roles. The end when Smith tells Taylor she can't go on with him is a haunting one.
I've never been to Dublin so I'm not sure how much it has changed from the years of the Rebellion to the Sixties, let alone a new century. But Jack Cardiff's cinematographer's eye does a great job in capturing same. Ditto in fact for the scenes in the Irish countryside which are as beautifully photographed as Ford's classic The Quiet Man.
Sean O'Casey can well lay claim to being Ireland's first man of letters and that's bucking some heavy competition like George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde for instance. But those two worthy writers got their main success abroad, O'Casey wrote and told the story of his people in the fashion of the hated Cromwell, 'warts and all.' His story is Ireland's at the birth of freedom.