Was this the last dance for Irish heritage films?

The film version of Dancing at Lughnasa failed to make it at the box office

CORK, IRELAND (PRWEB) August 26, 2003 -- Cork University Press: Despite Riverdance, Angelas Ashes and an international vogue for all things Irish during the 1990s the film version of Dancing at Lughnasa failed to make it at the box office. Does this mean that the Irish heritage film genre has had its day?

Perhaps the forthcoming (Spring 2004) study into the economic and cultural impact of cinema in both Ireland and Wales will consider this. —Dancing at Lughnasa (ISBN 1 85918 361 1, paperback, 104 pp, 135 x 190mm, €15.00/9.95/ $15).

Dancing at Lughnasa exists as a published play (Brian Friel), screenplay (Frank McGuinness) and a film (Pat OConnor). It is set in the fictional village of Ballybeg, Donegal in 1936. The book tells the story of the 5 unmarried Mundy sisters, together with their brother, a priest returned from the African missions, and the non-marital child they raise, who challenge preconceptions of Irish life in 1936.

Joan Fitzpatrick Dean, Professor of English at the University of Missouri and a longtime contributor to Film West, draws upon unpublished material from the Friel archive at the National Library of Ireland to look at the differences between the highly successful play and the commercially failed film.
                  
The commercial failure and critical neglect of Dancing at Lughnasa are due, in part, to the fact that much of the novelty that an Irish film would have had outside Ireland was lost in the years between the plays premiere and its release as a film. Whereas only a handful of Irish films were widely distributed in the UK and the US in the 1980s, more than a dozen reached an international market in the 1990s.

Dancing at Lughnasa failed to conform to the pattern of the Irish heritage film and challenged preconceptions about Ireland in the 1930s. The 1930s was a time which saw De Valera purge the Oath of Allegiance, the Seanad and the Office of Governor General; the Irish constitution was ratified; the IRA was outlawed.

In the bigger picture it was a time of upheaval and transition in Europe. As eager audiences may have been for images of a lost idyllic Ireland they were confronted with Michaels illegitimacy, the absence of support from neighbours or the community and the harsh realties of emigration.

In Ireland, the film was respectively and often favourably reviewed. In Britain negative reviews well outnumbered the mixed notices. Dancing at Lughnasa arrived in the US when the North American market was glutted with Irish and British films.