United States and United Kingdom, 1987
Directed by John Huston
With Donal McCann (Gabriel), Anjelica Huston (Gretta), Cathleen Delany (Julia, Helena Carroll (Kate)
With a runtime of 83 minutes and little eye-catching effects in its shooting and editing and instead a gracefully straightforward camerawork, which nevertheless is not immune to irony and at the end to lyricism, the last movie directed by veteran American filmmaker John Huston doe not seem an obvious candidate for the rank of masterpiece, especially when his classic crime and action stories come to mind, starting with his awesome debut feature of 1941 “The Maltese Falcon” or his 1948 classic “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”. Made as Houston was gravely ill, “The Dead” is the adaptation of the last text in the collection of short stories written by James Joyce, “The Dubliners”.
Remarkably faithful to this source text, the narrative is divided in two parts. The first is framed by images of cabs going and coming in an unpleasant though typical for the season snowy weather in front of a Dublin mansion belonging to two spinster sisters, Kate and Julia, seconded by a niece, who throw a special, lavish, party each year at Yuletide. People are in a hurry both to escape the snow and to get reunited with their old acquaintances in the cozy, well-known and well-liked place where this much awaited social ritual takes place. In these stuffed and elegant rooms, the camera fluidly roves, capturing telling details about the congenial crowd of characters. In the course of those snapshots on a varied cast an essential element comes out, the unsatisfied and insecure nature of a key guest of the old sisters, and one of their relatives, Gabriel.
Always glancing nervously at the speech he must make at the end of the dinner, Gabriel does not really look convinced by what he has to do or to say during the social event. A conversation with an in-your-face political militant betrays his malaise on the Irish identity politics and his own place within the Dublin high society. The looks they fail to exchange and a few testy remarks he makes hint at a less than harmonious relation with his lovely wife Gretta. They are often shot standing apart within the same space, with completely different postures the careful cinematography magnifies.
A wider sense of sadness and disillusion permeates from the supposedly entertaining moments of this party, like the recitation of an Irish ballad whose gravity in tone and meaning catch the guests – and a maid – off their guard, stirring seemingly deeply Gretta. And there is the singing performance by Julia whose record is movingly interspersed with images of her bedroom and the old objects of her daily life in the sprawling house she shares with her sister and their maids, with the lyrics and the singer’s age and limits fueling the heartbreaking sentiment that this life is part of a world which is slowly passing away (indeed, the possibility of her death haunts Gabriel in his thoughts concluding the narrative; the song thus introduced a theme proving to be overarching).
The long conversations during the diner give another turn to the sad feelings Houston depicts. The nostalgia for a previous period of opera singing and cultural life, the tension between some guests caused by drunkenness, and other incidents and words go against the banter that has been defining so far the party. The speech made by Gabriel and the following toast, which are shot from the vantage point of the old sisters, at the end of the table and from a low angle, give an impression of farewell note as much as being an example of inspiring and jovial statement. The departure of the guests is a messy business and includes a striking incident with Gretta: she suddenly stops coming down the stairs to listen to another ballad being unexpectedly sung; her husband looks at her with surprise; and time seems to be eerily suspended as Gretta is shot in a supernatural light, with a posture reminding typical images of the Madonna.
This surprising image brings us to the second, shorter, part. After looking again at the cabs in front of Julia and Kate’s house, the audience is carried inside one of them, where Gabriel and Gretta sit ill at ease. The dark environment of both the cab and the hotel where the couple later arrives stands in a sharp contrast to the warmer atmosphere of “The Dead”’s first part. The camera stops moving around and focuses on faces and their reflections in a mirror or the window panes.
The unease between the two lead characters that has been already suggested becomes a complete separation of hearts and minds as Gretta explains the cause of her feelings when she listened to the ballad. It reminded her of a young man she used to know and who eventually fell in love with her. But she had to leave the village they lived in and the move caused so deep a sorrow that he died. As Gretta starts to cry, Gabriel realizes that their own romance has never been that strong. Marriage, even a satisfying one on the face of it, does not mean passion; a lasting memory may feel more vivid and real than a real commitment. This realization launches a train of thoughts which is illustrated by images of the Irish landscape and snowy sky slowly bringing the movie to its powerfully wistful conclusion. The lines are directly borrowed from the short story, where the words are told by the narrator while in the film they are expressed by Gabriel’s voice. This change gives this character a greater importance and a greater coherence to the movie.
The theme that has clearly seduced Houston is the sense of failure, the idea folks did not get what they wished for, the easy way past can trap us. On second thoughts, this sense dovetails with many of his previous films but his genius is here to let these sentiments appear in subtle details that visually give a narration its deeper sense – this is a psychological portrait that is delicate, subdued, exquisitely graceful and thoughtful, away from the thunder of “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and closer to the tact of another low-key production of Huston, “A Walk with Love and Death” in 1969 (which also starred the director’s daughter who displayed the same grace while acting). The audience is discreetly led to understand the fragility of the characters, in particular Gabriel’s, and to realize how brittle our experience of life is.