James Joyce Movies

First-time Irish writer/director Sean Walsh spent ten years making Bl,.m (Bloom), an adaptation of James Joyce's infamously difficult 1922 epic Ulysses. Set in Dublin on the day of June 16, 1904, the film attempts to make a visual reconstruction of Joyce's stream-of-consciousness style. Following all the major themes of the original novel, it's bookended by the internal monologue given by the sexually driven Molly (Angeline Ball). Stephen Rea plays her husband, the introspective Jewish-Irishman Leopold Bloom. Hugh O'Conor plays the philosophical young writer Stephen Dedalus. Bloom premiered at the 2003 Taormina Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

In this tribute to James Joyce, Fionnula Flanagan gives a tour-de-force performance as a half-dozen or so women in Joyce's real and fictional worlds. When she portrays his wife Nora remembering their time together, Flanagan captures the era and the author in lyrical detail. As Sylvia Beach, the woman who first published Ulysses, new dimensions concerning the importance of Nora in Joyce's literary visions of women emerge, and when Flanagan interprets Joyce characters like Molly Bloom or a washerwoman from Finnegan's Wake, the beauty of Joyce's language shines through the melodious words. With an excellent supporting cast and the fine-tuning that came from presenting this tribute on stage, the film should warm the hearts of literary buffs and Joyce fans alike. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Adapted by Judith Rascoe from James Joyce's first novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is told through the eyes of Joyce's alter ego Stephen Dedalus. Played by Bosco Hogan, Dadelus comes of age in many ways when he attends Dublin University. The film retains Joyce's pointed, inquisitive barbs at Catholicism, a fact that caused as nearly much uneasiness in 1977 as it did when the novel was first published. Also retained are vestiges of Joyce's stream-of-consciousness technique, though producer/director Joseph Strick adopts a more cinematic narrative approach. In 1967, Strick had produced the film version of Joyce's Ulysses; several of the cast members of that earlier film (T. P. McKenna, Rosaleen Linehan, Maureen Potter) are reunited for Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Finnegan's Wake was the first attempt to cinematize the works of Irish author James Joyce. Based more on a stage adaptation by Mary Manning than the Joyce novel itself, the film concentrates on Dublin pubkeeper Finnegan (Martin J. Kelly), who while in the throes of inebriation has a vision of his own death. As the bemused Finnegan lies in his coffin, his friends gather for his wake. The "corpse" tries to cut through the keening and platitudes by probing the innermost thoughts of those closest to him. The surprising aspect of Finnegan's Wake is that so much of its difficult text works on screen--a tribute to the loving care of scripter/director/ editor Mary Ellen Bute, who while preparing this film spent her waking hours picking the brains and burrowing through the resource materials of the James Joyce Society. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi