I am well aware that a post headed up The Dead may not seem appropriate for the GIFT Challenge and it really creeps in under the wire as this film takes place on Twelfth Night, but it is one of my all time favourite films and to my utter joy it has just been re-released in the cinema (not that it will ever make Colchester where I live) and has also come out on DVD. This is terrific news for me as my old battered video was really on its last legs. It has been a long time since I viewed this film, probably ten years or more, so it was a pleasure to revisit this final film directed by John Huston as he died shortly after its completion. It is a truly fitting farewell.
The film is based on a short story from The Dubliners by James Joyce and is set in that city at the turn of the century. Gabriel and his wife Greta (Anjelica Huston) are going to a large family dinner and party given every year by the elderly aunts of the family and their niece. And that is it. That is the setting. That is all we need. Each character and member of the family is introduced to us by a little vignette or incident and over the period of the picture we get to know them and all their hopes and fears. There is humour in the persona of Frank, whose nagging mother is there and bosses him around all the time. Despite all attempts to keep him sober, he manages to get hopelessly drunk and the interplay between him and his mother is very very funny.
One of the guests at the dinner is a young tenor from the local opera company, a bit full of himself and eager to show off and towards the end of the evening as people are leaving he sings an unaccompanied Irish ballad (and quite heartbreakingly beautiful it is as well). Gabriel is at the foot of the stairs waiting for his wife and as the singing starts he turns to look at her and sees she is rooted to the spot half way down the flight. A look of indescribable pain and longing comes over her face as she listens to the music. We do not see the singer, we just hear the music and see the reactions of both Gabriel and Greta. The camera pans in on her face and we see all that she is feeling reflected in her facial expression before the music stops and she rouses herself and goes down to her husband who has waited and watched. This minute of quietness in the film that has been full of music and noise and laughter is one of my favourite cinema moments and each time I see it, I am moved beyond words. Happened again when I rewatched it this week. Film acting of the highest order
When they return to their hotel room Greta tells Gabriel of a young man who loved her when she was young. The song she had listened to had brought back her memories of him. He had once stood outside her window in the falling snow just to be near her. She had seen him there and knew that he was ill and should be at home in the warm. He later dies and as she tells her husband of this lost love she weeps and tells him 'he died because of me' . After she has gone to sleep, Gabriel stands at the window watching the falling snow thinking of what his wife had just told him and muses that on a night of celebration and union death is looming. As he ponders on this we see images of Aunt Julia's future death and snow falling on graveyards.
I am aware that this makes the film sound unutterably desolate and dreary but it is not. The major 
part of this story is full of light, warmth, humour, celebration and family love and it lifts the heart. I am sure most of us have a film, book or a piece of music that has special resonance and that becomes something we can watch or read over and over again. The Dead is one of mine and I would love more people to know about it.
