I WAS HAPPY HERE

UK, 1965, 91 minutes, Black and white.
Sarah Miles, Cyril Cusack, Julian Glover, Sean Caffrey, Maire Keane.
Directed by Desmond Davis.

I Was Happy Here is based on a fragment of a play by Jean Anouilh, his Antigone. It was adapted for the screen by Desmond Davis, a television director from the 1950s who made several feature films in the 1960s including Smashing Time with Rita Tushingham with whom he had worked in The Girl With Green Eyes in 1964. His main work was in television during the 1970s and during the 1980s he made the mythical saga, Clash of the Titans as well as another Edna O’ Brien story, The Country Girls.

This was an early film for Sarah Miles who went on to Blow Up and, with her husband Robert Bolt, Ryan’s Daughter and Lady Caroline Lamb.

She portrays a young Irish girl who goes to the swinging London of the 60s, falls in love with a macho doctor there, finds life in London very difficult and decides to return home to Ireland and her boyfriend from the past. It is a sometimes plaintive film, in the Irish scenes, of a sense of identity, longing for home. The cast includes Cyril Cusack.

1. The meaning of the title? (In America it was called ‘Time Lost - Time Remembered’. Was this a better title? How is the title significant in the context in which it was set in the film?

2. How is the film presented? From a man’s point of view or a woman’s? How strongly feminine was the film? How sympathetic towards women?

3. How did the film create its atmosphere? Comment on the black and white photography? Comment on the use of scenes, the artwork in each frame, the editing and crosscutting, the structure of the film with its flashbacks.

4. The film made a great deal of the contrast between Ireland and England, between the Irish countryside and
the English city. How successful was the film in building up each atmosphere with such detail? How then did they contrast? What points were being made in the presentation of this contrast? and its effects on people concerned?

5. What kind a person was Cass? Was there sufficient building up of the kind of person she was before the film opened? How dramatic the knowledge of her? The fact that something was wrong and that she had been happy in the town? How had the town and the countryside moulded her? Why did she want to leave? Why did she want Colin to go with her? Did she really love him? How had Matthew intruded then into this life?

6. How Irish was Cas? How lost was she in England? How lost was she without Colin? Would the baby have satisfied her? Would marriage have satisfied her? Was she basically a selfish girl, self-centred? Why not? What insights did the film give into a woman's life via Cass? Her emotional make up? Her longings? Her ambitions? Her need for love, her loneliness?

7. Was Colin a strong character? How well did he love Cass? Why did he not go to her in England? Did he love the sea better? Was he at fault what happened to Cass? Was this clear during her return? Would she speak to him when she returned? Why could he not fulfil this? How shocked was she when she learned that he was engaged?

8. What kind of a person was Matthew? Our first impressions of him as he intruded into Ireland? Did our point of view of him change? The sequences where he remembered the Christmas dinner? His rudeness? How is it evident that they were from two different worlds? Did the story of their first meeting. their friendship, the culmination of their love, the pregnancy and the wedding, the death of the child, modify our initial views of their relationship? What was wrong with Matthew? What redeeming features did he have?

9. How did Kate parallel Cass? Her love for Colin, yet her remaining in Ireland and marrying Colin? What influence did this have on Matthew?

10. How did Hogan serve as a kind of chorus for the film? How wise and sympathetic was he? Did he give Cas good advice? How did he help her with Matthew?

11. What did the film have to say about time and lost opportunities? What did the film have to say about time and change? Was the film pessimistic in its basic outlook?

12. What did the film have to say about decisions and decision-making? Did Colin make decisions? Did Cass make the decision in refusing to return with Matthew? Did Matthew make a decision to leave Cass in Ireland?

13. What future did each of the main characters have? What would become of Cass? Was this important?

14. The main themes of the film? How successfully were they treated: especially love, time, Ireland, men and women in their environment, optimism and pessimism. How successful a film was this in blending clever technique with depth of emotion?