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Director
SIdney Olcott
Credits
Writer: Gene Gauntier
Principal Cast
Gene Gauntier, Jack Clark
Category
Short
Sadly, only one reel of this three-reel film survives; recently discovered at the Museum of Modern Art. According to a contemporary synopsis, the story was another transatlantic emigrant tale, centering on a female character named Peggy O’Malley (Gene Gauntier), who leaves rural Ireland in search of a better life in America. Like those earlier films, it is a cautionary tale that follows her progress as an immigrant in New York where she gets into trouble with the law (accused of stealing a necklace) before being ‘saved’ by her Irish fiancé (Jack J. Clark). They marry and return to her father (Sidney Olcott) in Ireland. Come Back to Erin is an interesting gender reversal of the first Kalem film The Lad from Old Ireland, with the men now left at home waiting, but shares with it an anxiety about leaving the homeland for the corrupting forces of modernity and America that clearly spoke to audiences of the period. More than in the earlier films, the characters are contextualised in the real, everyday life of rural Ireland. Particularly striking in this regard are the scenes set in the Killarney cattle market and the blacksmith’s forge and the scenes of emigrant ships in Queenstown (now Cobh).
Notes by Tony Tracy.
14 minutes, USA, 1914, B&W
A QUIET LOVE 18.00
HAMNET 15.30
IT’S NEVER OVER, JEFF BUCKLEY 13.10, 20.40
JEAN-LUC GODARD: ALPHAVILLE 18.20
MY FATHER’S SHADOW 13.00
NO OTHER CHOICE 13.00
SENTIMENTAL VALUE 15.20
THE BIGGER PICTURE: BEFORE SUNRISE 20.30
THE PRESIDENT’S CAKE 15.45, 18.10 (OC)
THE SECRET AGENT 20.10
The IFI is supported by The Arts Council