Author and screenwriter Lee Dunne will introduce this screening.

From the Vaults is our monthly screening from the IFI Irish Film Archive. 

With a screenplay by Lee Dunne (author of the banned novel Goodbye to the Hill (1965)) and of the subsequent Evening Herald article ‘Goodbye to the Pill’ (1970), I Can’t I Can’t tells the tale of a young Irish Catholic bride (Teresa Wyatt) who is devastated when her pregnant mother miscarries and dies on her wedding day.

One of seven children, she blames her father’s lust for the death and refuses to consummate her own marriage with her new husband (Dennis Waterman). Her parish priest forbids her to accept her doctor’s suggestion that she should use contraception and she is driven to desperate measures. The Most Rev Dr. Lucey tried to have it withdrawn from the Cork Film Festival as “with its nude and semi-nude scenes it must lead to immodest thoughts”.

See also Sex, the first of our three-month season dedicated to excess, presenting examples of how cinema has taken on sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll in Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll.