The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987)

Directed by

Jack Clayton

Genre

drama film

Country

Australia, United Kingdom

Runtime

1h 56m

Rating

6.6 of 10 from 32 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A middle-aged woman in 1950s Belfast lives a lonely life of quiet desperation, clinging to her Catholic faith and dreams of a better future. When she begins a tentative romance with a man who turns out to be a con artist, her carefully constructed world crumbles, forcing her to confront her anger at the church and her wasted life.

melancholicslow-burnunsettlingbleaktenderemotionally rawclaustrophobiclonely

What happens

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne is a 1987 British drama film made by HandMade Films and United British Artists (UBA) starring Maggie Smith and Bob Hoskins. It was directed by Jack Clayton (his final theatrical film) and produced by Richard Johnson and Peter Nelson, with George Harrison and Denis O'Brien as executive producers. The music score was by Georges Delerue and the cinematography by Peter Hannan. The screenplay was by Peter Nelson from the novel Judith Hearne by Northern Irish-Canadian writer Brian Moore. The story presents "a character study film about a woman's rage against the Church for her wasted life". Moore wrote the novel after leaving Ireland, in part because of the religious conflict there, and was living in Canada. The book was published in 1955 and was optioned for the stage and screen almost immediately. John Huston optioned it for a film with Katharine Hepburn. Director Irvin Kershner planned on casting Deborah Kerr. Eventually, Jack Clayton, a Catholic himself, was chosen to direct. The end result focuses on Judith Hearne's wasted life, "and while the bittersweet ending gives her back some measure of dignity, we are under no illusions that she has much more to look forward to". The cast also features Wendy Hiller, Marie Kean, Ian McNeice, Alan Devlin, Prunella Scales, Sheila Reid, and Aidan Gillen in his first film appearance. The novel is set in Belfast, but for the film the story was relocated to Dublin. Smith and Hoskins won awards for their portrayals of Hearne and Madden - she, as Best Actress, her fourth BAFTA, and he Best Actor at the Evening Standard British Film Awards, where Smith won jointly the Best Actress award with Billie Whitelaw. In 1995 BBC Radio 4 produced a radio drama adaptation of Moore's novel directed by Michael Quinn. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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