Passages from Finnegan’s Wake
Screening on Film
Directed by Mary Ellen Bute.
With Martin J. Kelly, Jane Reilly, Peter Haskell.
US, 1965, 35mm, black & white, 97 min.
Print source: HFA
With Martin J. Kelly, Jane Reilly, Peter Haskell.
US, 1965, 35mm, black & white, 97 min.
Print source: HFA
Mary Ellen Bute, a true poet of cinema, created a joyously Joycean, fascinating, and imaginative film, a mixture of the aural—for Joyce’s words are not only spoken but seen in subtitles—and the visual. A delight to critics, Joyceans, and lovers of film, Passages from Finnegan’s Wake suggested a new orientation for students of Joyce as well as for cineastes. Time magazine wrote that “its dream sequences . . . featuring reverse footage, collages and montages . . . frequently are as challenging and witty as Joyce’s prose.”