I feel like the BFI have done
Maeve something of a disservice by giving it maybe the most pallid cover art on my shelf and giving the media black-and-white publicity stills when the film is in colour. Even the clip they've uploaded to YouTube is in much poorer quality than you'll find on disc.
Thankfully, their release is terrific and essential.
'A Film by Pat Murphy, John Davies, and Robert Smith', Maeve follows the 20-year-old title character played by Mary Jackson, who returns from London to Belfast to visit her family. We get glimpses of Maeve's past, leading up to her decision to leave Belfast, in a manner not unlike Terence Davies (though this came a
full 7 years prior to Distant Voices, Still Lives). The past is a character in Maeve's story, as it was (or is) in the story of Northern Ireland. As Maeve puts it to her (ex-)boyfriend in an argument about nationalism's romanticisation of the past or, as she sees it, how it is too short-sighted to imagine a future
The past has its own power. It feeds off people believing in it. The more you focus on it, the more reality it gains.
To the British soldiers, whose intimidating presence is always felt even when they're not in frame, it seems that the characters are all representative of the threat of Irish nationalism but the group is a heterogenous mixture. Maeve's lover believes passionately in the cause, but has inner conflict over armed struggle. Maeve finds herself in conflict with him and others as she is a feminist and sees the sexism within the Republican movement as being a missed opportunity, one that would be a mere stepping stone to the next revolutionary crycle.
"Being a woman is a nationality I carry around with me. The time when women were spectators is long gone. You are close to the women here because they're fighting for freedom like you. They've demanded that the aims of the revolution include them. And if, when this war is over, their position is still the same, they'll recognise you as the next stage in their struggle."
While Murphy cites Brecht and Godard, specifically the latter's political works with the Groupe Dziga Vertov, as primary influences, I find her work in Maeve to feel much more personal and heartfelt - no doubt owing to the autobiographical elements; Murphy, undoubtedly the
auteur of the film, had also left Belfast for London, where Maeve was funded by the BFI, returning to Belfast to film Maeve - which was the first feature to be made there.
In a recent interview with The Irish Times, Murphy spoke about the risk involved with the film:
Quote:
It was felt that it would be actually dangerous for people to have their names on it. I remember there were three screenings actually, one was for the actors, the second one was for the communities like Ballymurphy and Andersonstown. Their view was that if someone from this community gets an opportunity to make a film, you don’t make a film that’s critical of this community.
[...]
when it was shown in Edinburgh it was attacked by the Glasgow Herald and by the BBC for ‘betraying our soldiers’ or something like that. They wrote something very vicious. And I remember Peter Sainsbury from the BFI threatening to take them to the Press Council
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While it may seem that Murphy was on for a hiding for nothing with Maeve, forty years on the work feels both prescient and timely with its revolutionary spirit just as ferocious, its passionate anger just as justified.
Murphy has made two features since -
Anne Devlin, which stars Bríd Brennan, who had previously played Maeve's sister. That film, which has also
been recently restored, is a biopic Anne Devlin, who was a co-conspirator of Robert Emmet, leader of the Irish rebellion of 1803. It was recently ranked at #3 on
The Irish Times' list of the 50 best Irish films ever made behind, er, Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon and John Huston's The Dead. So, it kind of tops the list depending on your perspective.
Nora (2000), which I haven't seen, is another biopic - this time of Nora Barnacle, wife of James Joyce, who are respectively played by Susan Lynch and Ewen McGregor.
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The BFI release is "presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.37:1 with original mono audio. The film was remastered using the original 16mm A+B negative and 16mm interpositive elements which were scanned at 2K resolution. The audio was remastered using the original 16mm optical negative. All these elements are held by the BFI National Archive."
Extras include a new video essay by Chris O'Neill, with narration by Claire Loy, that's also viewable on YouTube and is an engaging watch.
The major extra here is
Irish Cinema: Ourselves Alone?, a feature-length entry of the BFI's Century of Cinema series, directed by Donald Taylor Black. As with all episodes of that series that I've seen, it provides a worthwhile summary of the national cinema - obligatory clips of The Quiet Man and of Neil Jordan winning the Oscar for The Crying Game, but also great footage from the archive that I haven't seen elsewhere.
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