Juno and the Paycock

Plot synopsis:
=== Act I ===
Juno and the Paycock takes place in the tenements of Dublin in 1922, just after the outbreak of the Irish Civil War, and revolves around the misfortunes of the dysfunctional Boyle family. The father, "Captain" Jack (so called because of his propensity for telling greatly exaggerated stories of his short career as a merchant sailor), is a loafer who claims to be unable to work because of pains in his legs, which mysteriously appear whenever someone mentions work to him. Despite his family's poverty, Jack spends all his time and money at the pub with Joxer Daly, his ne'er-do-well "butty," instead of looking for a job. The mother, Juno (so called because all of the important events in her life took place in June), is the only member of the family currently working, as daughter Mary is on strike and son Johnny is disabled, having lost his arm in the War of Independence. Mary feels guilty about dumping her boyfriend and fellow striker, Jerry Devine, who feels more strongly for her than she does for him. Meanwhile, Johnny agonises over his betrayal of his friend Robbie Tancred, a neighbour and former comrade in the IRA, who was subsequently murdered by Free State supporters; Johnny is terrified that the IRA will execute him as punishment for being an informant. Near the end of the act, one of Jack's relatives dies, and a solicitor, Charles Bentham, brings news that the Boyles have come into a large inheritance; Bentham notes aloud that the will names "John Boyle, [my] first cousin, of Dublin" as one of the beneficiaries. Overjoyed with the news, Jack vows to Juno to end his friendship with Joxer and change his ways.
=== Act II ===
A mere two days after receiving Mr Bentham's news, Jack has already begun flaunting his newfound wealth by purchasing a new suit, new furniture, a gramophone, and other luxuries on credit, in anticipation of receiving the inheritance. The Boyles throw a party and invite Bentham, who is courting Mary. Joxer is present, Jack having already forgotten his vow to break off contact with him, and Mrs Maisie Madigan, a neighbour to whom Jack owes money, shows up after having been invited in Act I. During the party, Robbie Tancred's funeral procession passes the tenement, but the Boyles and their guests halt their carousing only when Tancred's grieving mother stops at their door. Juno goes out to offer support to Mrs Tancred, who delivers a monologue mourning the loss of her son and praying for an end to the war, but Jack selfishly ignores her suffering.
=== Act III ===
Two months later, Mr Bentham abruptly ceases all contact with the family and abandons Mary, who, it is revealed, is secretly carrying his child out of wedlock. While Jack is sleeping, Juno takes Mary to the doctor. Soon after they leave, Needle Nugent, the local tailor, storms into the flat and repossesses Jack's suit. Then Mrs Madigan arrives, demanding repayment of the loan she gave Jack; when he refuses to pay, she takes the gramophone as recompense. Joxer (who was present for both incidents, and did nothing to help) needles Jack about rumours that the inheritance is not forthcoming; this soon devolves into an argument during which Joxer openly mocks Jack's fortune as fraudulent. While Johnny upbraids his father for embarrassing the family, Juno returns alone and delivers the news of Mary's pregnancy. As Juno pleads with Jack to use the leftover money from the inheritance to move the family to a different city, he angrily reveals that they will receive nothing due to an error Bentham made while drafting the will (he failed to include the beneficiaries' names, referring to Jack only as "[my] first cousin"). As a result, numerous relations are claiming the inheritance, which is rapidly being eaten up by legal costs; to make matters worse, Bentham has apparently fled the country out of shame. Johnny berates his father for his shortsightedness and avarice. Unable to cope with the stress of the situation, Jack disowns Mary and retreats to the pub to drink with Joxer. Johnny persuades Juno to follow Jack and beg him to come home. Mary returns, and Johnny disowns her as well. Jerry Devine shows up to patch things up with Mary, but he too renounces her when he learns of her pregnancy. As the last of Jack's fancy new furniture is being repossessed, several IRA men arrive and drag Johnny away; Juno later hears from Mrs Madigan that a body resembling Johnny's has been found on a country road, riddled with bullets. Juno decides that Jack will never take on his responsibilities as a father and breadwinner, so she leaves to make a better life for herself and Mary. She sends Mary to live with a relative and, before going to the police station to identify Johnny's body, delivers a monologue that echoes Mrs Tancred's in Act II. Some time later, Jack stumbles home from the pub with Joxer, extremely drunk and unaware that his son is dead or that his wife and daughter have left him. After a brief conversation, Jack accidentally drops his last sixpence on the floor; he drunkenly mourns that "the whole world is in a terrible state o' chassis" before passing out.

Tags: boring

Review:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, it's "talky."  Possibly because it's a film version of Sean O'Casey's seminal stage play about poverty, class, betrayal and death in the slums of Dublin during the Irish Civil War." Dull?"  This film is taut enough that a common votive light becomes as frightening as the appearance of a ghost.
Juno and the Paycock is very much like Sean O'Casey's other filmed work, The Plough and the Stars.
Plough and the Stars takes place during the Easter Rebellion and Juno and the Paycock takes place during the Civil War after the British leave everything but Ulster.The Boyle family who are the protagonists are not the noblest clan ever put on film, but I think a lot of us would recognize ourselves more than we care to admit.
Sara Allgood is mother Boyle, nicknamed Juno who bears all kinds of tribulations for the 90 minutes of the film.
She has one useless husband who'd spend all his time in the pub if he could, a son who's an amputee lost in the fighting, and a daughter who gets taken in my an English solicitor who brings news of an inheritance and then takes advantage of the daughter.Sean O'Casey got good and slammed after these two plays were produced, showing a side of Irish life that wasn't pleasant.
This was one of Alfred Hitchcock's earliest sound features, but it really is a photographed stage play for the most part.
When John Ford did The Plough and the Stars he very cleverly cut in a lot of newsreel footage from the Easter Rebellion giving a real feeling for the times.What Ford did and what Hitchcock didn't do was inject typical John Ford touches in the film so it is more Ford and O'Casey.
It is, like other botched, cheapo versions of Hitchcock's early films, a disgraceful transfer from poor quality source.
Slightly theatrical acting by some actors as they ARE theatrical actors, not used to screen acting which had previously been silent.This is clearly a film of a play and therefore Hitchcock himself wasn't fond of it but he did a superb job as did most of the cast.
Hitchcock's second sound feature is a well done film though it isn't Hitch's usual genre.
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.
Sara Allgood and Edward Chapman head up a good ensemble cast as the long suffering wife and lazy, drunkard husband, respectively.
The spars camera work makes the movie seem like little more than a filmed recording of the stage play it was adapted from.
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.
Master of suspense Hitchcock seems content to just film the stage play with about half a dozen set ups and few camera movements.
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.
The movie is based on Irish playwright Sean O'Casey's play of the same name about an Irish family named the Boyles.
Still the cast are members of the Irish Abbey Theatre Company and have performed the play on stage together hundred times.
The film is unlike Hitchcock's other films but yet it is worth watching an early stage to screen adaptation with the original cast of players who originated their roles on stage.
Furthermore I also like the fact that this film is completely different than anything Hitchcock would go on later to do as far as story and style wise in his films.
Early in Kubrick's career, Kubrick did some different styles than his usual signature stuff, and Hitchcock did something completely different than his norm with this film here.
And I want my money back.Maybe this feeling comes from a true disapointment, since the day before I saw Number Seventeen, which starts with an incredibly dull pace, and then turns into a quickly edited fast-paced ending.I was expecting something like that.Instead I got a short length movie that seems more a stage production than a film itself, but with a lack of charm, charisma or its director´s suspense trademark.No to mention the annoying accent of the Paycock.
The worst part with this would have to be the few sections in the film where characters attempt to sing which is truly some of the worst sounds that I have ever heard coming from anything at any time.In conclusion, this is one of the worst films that I have ever seen in my entire life and there isn't a single redeemable quality in it.
Even taking exception for budget and circumstances that would have obligated him to take on this film as an early sound project, "Juno and The Paycock" does little to distinguish the work of Sean O'Casey and even less for Hitchcock.
I don't mind talky films, and I really enjoy good dialogue that was occasionally present in this movie (He can't climb a ladder but he can skip into a bar.), but there were too many (and too long) empty pauses between.You may want to watch 'Juno and the Paycock' only if you need to see all the Hitchcock's movies, or if you are interested how boring movie one of the most interesting directors managed to turn out..
I do say this with a heavy heart, and I love Hitchcock and a vast majority of his films and consider him my all-time favourite director.
Seeing Juno and the Paycock for the first time, as a Hitchcock completest and to see whether it was as bad as I'd heard, unfortunately this was another film of his I didn't care for.
Sara Allgood's performance is the best thing about Juno and the Paycock, commanding and formidable, and she is supported well by a wonderfully outlandish Sydney Morgan and a suitably gruff Edward Chapman.
I was disappointed in Hitchcock's direction here, apparently he was an admirer of the source material(a stage play by Sean O'Casey) but that didn't come across.
While competently directed, the movie is too obviously a photographed stage play (thought Hitchcock tried to open it up).
Juno and the Paycock belongs to Hitchcocks early times when he had no choice for scripts he would get.
This time the master director to come got a great play to shoot for the screen but as Hitchcock knew himself this one didn't get anywhere.The biggest problem is the forced comical features which spoiled also many other tragedies and thrillers on the genius' way to the top.
It's not clear was that the producers demand or just a mistake of young Hitchcock but as it is Juno and the Paycock fades to history as a bad example of movie directing..
You would never imagine that Alfred Hitchcock, of all people, had directed this film of the classic Irish play by Sean O'Casey (1880-1964), JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK (first performed onstage, 1924), set in Dublin during the Troubles.
The cast partially consists of some of the famous Abbey Players from Dublin who originated the play on stage three years before, and the star is the amazing Sara Allgood, who plays the character Juno.
Sara Allgood was a star of Dublin's Abbey Theatre in its grandest days, when the plays of Yeats, Synge, O'Casey, Shaw, and the other leading Irish playwrights were all being performed and attracting the attention of the entire theatrical world.
I had never heard of her before and it has taken me all these years finally to see a film in which she plays one of her most famous dramatic lead roles with great power and magnificence.
His film did real justice to O'Casey's play and captures the very essence of the Irish, with their capacity for deep emotion, bawdy humour, wailing tragedy, poetic way of talking, sheer blarney, and their raw but courageous existences in those days.
As one of the earliest sound films, it is difficult to think of this version of O'Casey's play being surpassed.
At least that's the take offered in this simplistically annoying play by Irish nationalist turned expatriate Sean O'Casey, in a film adaptation by a young Alfred Hitchcock.Escaping from gunfire on a Dublin streetcorner, "Captain" Boyle (Edward Chapman) and pal Joxer (Sidney Morgan) enjoy lives of irresponsibility, Boyle sponging off his wife Juno (Sara Allgood) and daughter Mary (Kathleen O'Regan), Joxer sponging off Boyle.
But the film version feels dated beyond its years, sickly sentimental, cheap, and mean.Hitchcock fans, along with Irish history buffs the only ones with an interest in this production, will find little to chew on here.
Presenting such unsympathetic people and then asking us to care about them is one of "Juno And The Paycock's" two great failures, the other being O'Casey's heavy hand when it comes to dramatic reversals."Take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh" is a repeated phrase in this film.
Juno and the Paycock (1930) * 1/2 (out of 4) Hitchcock adapted Sean O'Casey's play but the end results are fairly poor.
Outside of some great performances we're left with a pretty bland and forgettable film that certainly wasn't what Hitchcock needed.
I'm really not sure what Hitchcock was trying to do with the film because the story is so dull and lifeless.
The technical side of things is also quite messy as the cinematography is poor and it appears they were trying to make the film look like a play but this certainly doesn't help things.
Talky dull filmed stage play....
Despite being directed by Alfred Hitchcock, little is done to make it interesting as a film.
Their children, one-armed John Laurie (as Johnny) and pregnant Kathleen O'Regan (as Mary), are left holding the dramatic potential.*** Juno and the Paycock (6/29/30) Alfred Hitchcock ~ Sara Allgood, Edward Chapman, Kathleen O'Regan, John Laurie.
O'Casey's JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK, considered one of his greatest works, could and should have been a better, more mobile dramatic film under the hand of Alfred Hitchcock who had already produced THE LODGER and BLACKMAIL -- early masterpieces of suspense -- but it seems as though the Director did not really know the material or did not know how to approach such a story in a visual way.
What saves the film from total oblivion is the very theatrical performance of Sara Allgood as Juno Boyle: she carries the emotional weight of the drama that plays itself out, and her outcry at the end is very potent.
Hitchcock would only direct another similarly themed movie called THE SKIN GAME two years later, but it's clear that at this point of his career he was experimenting with sound and would move on to much better films as the Thirties progressed..
"Juno and the Peacock" (or Paycock) is not a movie that most Alfred Hitchcock fans will enjoy, being rather stagey, downbeat and slow- moving, but it does preserve the fine, stagey performances by Edward Chapman (as the Paycock, unrecognizable here in his film debut), Sidney Morgan (the Abbey player, NOT the director as IMDb once contended - I assume they have now corrected this error), Kathleen O'Regan, John Laurie (movie debut), and Sara Allgood.
Although filmed for the most part in long takes, Hitch has opened the play up a bit, which certainly helps the pace.
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and written by Sean O'Casey with scenario by Hitch's wife Alma Reville, this successful O'Casey play did not translate well to the silver screen.
Instead, it's a plodding mess, though it does serve as a rather inauspicious (talkie) film debut for the Irish character actor, and future Oscar winner, Barry Fitzgerald (Going My Way (1944)).Ignoring the fact that this drama's story is nothing like the director's later works, the film is still completely lacking any evidence of his technique or mastery of the camera (unlike many of his other early films).
The film does precede and resemble in many ways director John Ford's The Informer (1935), but the plot's main thrust is how a poor Irish family's prospects change when they learn they are to receive a substantial windfall.An orator (Fitzgerald) sets the Dublin scene: hard times have befallen this Irish community, but everyone is urged to buck up and pull together before gunshots ring out and the crowd has to scatter.
Former sea Captain Boyle (Edward Chapman) is now the loafer patriarch of one of these families, but his wife Juno (Sara Allgood, reprising her role from the O'Casey play) "wears the pants", though occasionally (e.g. in front of non- family members) she lets him think he does.
The Boyles have a son, Johnny, who walks with a bad hip and is missing an arm from his freedom fighting days.However, the director makes no secret of the fact that it was Johnny who ratted out a compatriot (though apparently not for money, as Victor McLaglen's character does in the aforementioned Ford film).
In his second sound film, Hitchcock forgets everything silent film taught him and simply photographs a depressing, static, one set stage play.
This is not to discount Hitchcock's contribution but the Master had his three-decade streak coming so this can be seen as an early warm-up with the then-rising sound technology, but the film is as close to Hitch' universe as Walt Disney is to Russ Meyer.The story is about a dysfunctional family, the Boyles, the father is a loafer who spends time drinking with his friend (and efficient comic-relief) Joxer and talking about his 'glorious' naval past (he's nicknamed Captain, but his tendency to exaggerate his stories doesn't fool anyone).
Sean O'Casey makes a play of high sociological value, setting the story in one of these brownish tenements our memories usually borrow from Jim Sheridan's movie or sketches about Irish community.
And the dysfunctional aspect of the family, that slap in the face, also extends to the Irish context.The film is set in the midst of the Civil War and it's not just a colorful detail as it opens with a long oration from Barry Fitzgerald praising the people's courage.
It has nothing to do with Hitch' canon yet the fact that it is associated with Hitchcock's name is the film's ironic blessing because this is exactly why most movie buffs will be curious enough to discover one of 'Hitchcock's earlier films, so maybe apart from Irish or British people, thanks to Hitchcock, the work of Sean O'Casey will never totally sink into oblivion..
Before I begin the review, I would like to point out that watching this film isn't easy--particularly for people aren't used to the strong accents.
So the fact that JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK might seem nothing like a Hitchcock film is simply because there was no "Hitchcock Style" yet.JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK is a look at an Irish family and their rather ordinary and stereotypical lives.
The wife, Juno (Sara Algood), is a long-suffering woman who tries to make good with what they've got--which isn't much.
There's the solid mother, Juno Boyle (Sara Allgood); the blowhard father (Edward Chapman), the impulsive and love-stricken daughter (Kathleen O'Regan), and the brooding son who has lost an arm in the service of the Irish Republican Army (John Laurie).Times are hard.
There's only faith itself.I know this is supposed to be good because, after all, it combines Alfred Hitchcock with Sean O'Casey.