IFI & Oscariana A Wilde Dublin Festival celebrate the 170th birthday of Oscar Wilde with this 30th anniversary screening of this poignant comedy. Alfie Byrne (Albert Finney) is a poetry-spouting bus conductor who is secretly attracted to the driver of his bus (Rufus Sewell) but unwilling to reveal his sexuality to an intolerant 1960s Dublin. When he decides to honour his hero Oscar Wilde with a production of the scandalous Salome, featuring members of his local amateur theatre group and a handful of his talentless but enthusiastic bus passengers, he encounters hostilities on all sides not least from his sister Lily (Brenda Fricker), and his cantankerous butcher (Michael Gambon). Albert Finney delivers a star turn in Barry Devlin’s poignant tale about a man struggling with repressed desire. The film was released soon after male homosexuality was decriminalised in Ireland in 1993.

Introduced by writer Barry Devlin.

See also Archive at Lunchtime: The Importance of Being Dublin here.

Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn.