Ulysses (1967)
Screen: 'Ulysses' Brings a Faithful View of Joyce's Dubliners:Movie Will Open Today for 3 Days' Stay

By BOSLEY CROWTHER
Published: March 14, 1967

AS faithful and fine a screen translation of James Joyce's "Ulysses" as anyone with taste, imagination and a practical knowledge of this medium could ask has been made by Joseph Strick and Fred Haines and the excellent Irish, Scottish and American cast Mr. Strick got together in Dublin last fall for the true-location shooting of the film.

Everything essential to the story that is told in Mr. Joyce's massive scanning of one day in the lives of three major and any number of minor small-time Dubliners is packed into this two-and-a-quarter-hour picture, along with the vivid fantasies of Leopold Bloom, the paramount character, and the gist of Mr. Joyce's poetry. As a matter of fact, in this extraction of the meat of Mr. Joyce's classic work, Mr. Strick and Mr. Haines have made a digest—or a pony—that is worth the novel's weight.

For reasons arcane to the business of distributing and merchandising films, rather than because of any anxiety about possible annoyance by the police, "Ulysses" will open this evening for a run that will be limited to three day's at the Beacon, Broadway at 75th Street, and 11 other theaters in the metropolitan area. It will open at the same time and for the same run at 53 other theaters in the United States.

If it does well in these engagements, the Walter Reade Organization, which has helped to finance it and is handling its American distribution, will no doubt make arrangements for further theatrical bookings later on.

Naturally, the first question those who know the novel will ask, after reassurance that the film does fair justice to it, is how much of Joyce's candid language, and his descriptions of the erotic fantasies of Bloom, his wife, Molly, and Stephen Dedalus (who is a counterpart of Joyce himself) are in the film. The answer to that is plenty. Mr. Strick has not stinted in the least, nor has he violated contemporary custom and taste, in allowing Bloom to vision the thoughts that run through his head of his wife's suspected infidelities and his own self-exalting fantasies.

The whole segment having to do with Bloom in Nighttown, when the generally passive Jewish tradesman visits the brothel of Bella Cohen and there ses himself a participant in weird and symbolistic rites, is every bit as meaningful and brilliant as a similar passage in Federico Fellini's "8½," and it is explicitly faithful to the spirit and the word of Mr. Joyce.

Likewise the famous reverie of Molly at the end, when she lies in bed and remembers her sensual experiences, some of which are actual encounters with the brute, Blazes Boylan, and some are the idle thoughts and speculations of a woman who is clearly oversexed, is done with great candor and humor. The words are such as are used by average men and women in their intimacies, and they become, in the voice of Barbara Jefford, who plays Molly, a kind of earthy, desirous poetry.

Such is the frank and honest quality that Mr. Strick has preserved in this film. At the same time, he has imbued it with humor and pictorial eloquence.

Shooting the picture in Dublin as it is today, he has naturally been compelled to bring the story, which was set in 1904, up to date. His characters are present-day people. The streets are full of automobiles. The quays along the river are crowded with modern ships.

But the change of time makes no difference. Bloom is still the uncertain Jew. Molly is still the indolent housewife. Stephen Dedalus is still the uncertain Jew, teacher, haunted by the ghost of his mother and longing to be a great poet. The citizens Bloom encounters are still clouded by their Catholic bigotry and moved by the same curiosities and carnal appetites as is he.

With a beautifully utilized camera, Mr. Strich has suffused his film with the grayness and mellowness of Dublin, the atmosphere of the pubs, the morbidness of the graveyards, the glory of the view from Howth Head. And in the fine skills of his performers, he has got the true characters that Mr. Joyce has made universal and timeless in his masterpiece.

Miss Jefford as Molly is superior, a robust woman just this side of course, yet full of human longing and a distant loneliness. Milo O'Shea is perfect as a fortyish, black-haired Bloom, bright-eyed when fun and lust are rising, flaccid and pathetic when rebuffed.

Maurice Roeves, an angular Scotsman, makes a fine, sensitive Stephen Dedalus, hinting at inner torment and a bad disposition to see ghosts. Unfortunately, truncation of the novel has made it so we see less of him and have less clarification of his relations with Bloom and Molly than we should. But still we see enough of him to gather the sense of Bloom's strange affinity for him.

Others in the cast earn strong approval: Anna Manahan as Bella Cohen, Joe Lynch as Blazes Boylan, T. P. McKenna as Buck Mulligan (though this role has also been truncated), Martin Dempsey as Stephen's father and ever so many others. They fill up a very rich film.

I must add the price asked for this picture may seem exorbitant. It is $5.50 for the night performance, $4 for the afternoon. The Walter Reade people say they've had to ask that much to fetch a sufficient gross. They might have borrowed the line of Bella Cohen: "This is not a brothel. It's a 10-shilling house!"

ULYSSES; screenplay by Joseph Strick and Fred Haines, based on the novel by James Joyce; directed by Mr. Strick; a Walter Reade Jr.-Joseph Strick Production released by Continental. At the Beacon Theater, Broadway and 74th Street, and 11 other theaters in the metropolitan area. Running time: 140 minutes.
Molly Bloom . . . . . Barbara Jefford
Leopold Bloom . . . . . Milo O'Shea
Stephen Dedalus . . . . . Maurice Roeves
Buck Mulligan . . . . . T. P. McKenna
Blazes Boylan . . . . . Joe Lynch
Simon Dedalus . . . . . Martin Dempsey
Mrs. Dedalus . . . . . Sheila O'Sullivan
Haines . . . . . Graham Lines
Jack Power . . . . . Peter Mayock
Gerty MacDowell . . . . . Fionnuala Flanagan
Bella Cohen . . . . . Anna Manahan
Zoe Higgins . . . . . Maureen Toal
Josie Breen . . . . . Maureen Potter
Myles Crawford . . . . . Chris Curran
Mary Driscoll . . . . . Marie Hastings
Martin Cunningham . . . . . Eddie Golden
Cyril Sargent . . . . . Ruadhan Neeson
Cissy Caffrey . . . . . Biddie White-Lennon
Nurse Callan . . . . . Rosaleen Linehan
Alexander J. Dowie . . . . . O. Z. Whitehead
The Citizen . . . . . Geoffrey Golden
Lieutenant Gardner . . . . . Tony Doyle
Private Carr . . . . . James Bartley
Private Compton . . . . . Colin Bird
Bantam Lyons . . . . . Des Perry