YOUNG CASSIDY

UK, 1965, 105 minutes, Colour.
Rod Taylor, Maggie Smith, Julie Christie, Flora Robson, Michael Redgrave, Edith Evans, Jack Mc Gowran, Sian Phillips.
Directed by Jack Cardiff.

Young Cassidy is a very interesting film version of the early life of Sean O' Casey. In its visual re-creation of the Dublin of the early decades of the 20th century, it provides the audience with the opportunity for understanding the feeling of the Irish situation, its desperation and its depression.

Rod Taylor gives a tough yet credibly poetic performance as Young Cassidy and Maggie Smith gives yet another different performance as his timid librarian girl-friend. Michael Redgrave gives a cameo as Yeats and Edith Evans as Lady Gregory. Julie Christie is striking in a small part as a prostitute. Young Cassidy is a good drama as well as being a fascinating historical film.

1. An interesting film about Ireland? Why?

2. What picture of Ireland in the early decades of this century did the film give? hunger, look of work, squalid city poverty, disease the pubs, the anti-English feeling, a depressed people? Did it give you insights into the man himself, into the playwright in his times and what he was trying to communicate? How?

4. What did the early scenes of the Cassidy family convey? How did they illustrate the film's themes - Johnny and work and ambitions, money, Mother and her sorrows, the house, Ellen, her husband, children and illness, Tom, Catholicism, deaths?

5. What was the significance of Daisy in the film? What part of troubled Ireland did she represent? What did she do for Johnny Cassidy's life?

6. Comment on the presentation of the strikes and riots. What effect did they have on the audience? Did they help to explain why rebel armies were formed? (But what about the Irish squabbling about uniforms and colours?)

7. The Easter rising is famous. Was it a presentation from a distance effective in the film? What did it contribute to the film?

8. Several sequences were devoted to Johnny's ideological discussions with his friend. What did they add to the film and your response to Johnny and his beliefs?

9. Did you enjoy Cassidy's early encounters with Norah at the library? How did their relationship grow? Why did they fall in love? What did they have in common?

10. Was the time jump from the 1916 situation to the Black and Tan situations of 1921-2 effective? How had Dublin changed in those years? Why?

11. Why were Cassidy's ploys initially successful? What were they doing for Ireland? What did they show the people? What did Norah contribute to this?

12. How were Yeats and Lady Gregory presented in the film - as characters, as Irish, as people interested in the theatre and Ireland? How did they widen O' Casey's horizons? How did they help him?

13. Why was the audience so hostile to "The Plough and the Stars"? Was it the truth? Why couldn't they accept this? Why such a physically violent reaction? Had the years dimmed their views, and cleaned them up, so quickly? What did this reveal about the Irish and their character?

14. Was Norah right in the assessment of herself and in her refusal to go with him? How much did this hurt her?

15. Was Cassidy right to leave Ireland? What future would he have had there? Was his going a condemnation of Ireland or a weakness in himself?