A Bloomsday Film Screening: ULYSSES

A Bloomsday Film Screening: ULYSSES

Directed by Joseph Strick; adapted from the novel by James Joyce

 (1967. B/W 132mins. Made in UK & Ireland)

To mark James Joyce’s “Bloomsday 2025’, this is a rare opportunity to see Joseph Strick’s 1967 film adaptation of James Joyce’s book Ulysses: “This is a bold and high-minded stab at the ultimate unfilmable book” writes Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian. Staring the great Irish actor Milo O’Shea, who gives an powerful performance as Leopold Bloom, along with Maurice Roëves playing Stephen Dedalus and Barbara Jefford as Molly Bloom.

58 years have passed when Joyce’s Ulysses made it to the big screen, only to be banned in Ireland. Strick’s film would remain banned until the year 2000, giving it the honour of being the longest banned film in the Irish state. It was also banned in many other countries, it inspired a protest at the Cannes Film Festival and in New Zealand, it was only shown to gender-segregated audiences. The use of the ‘f” word, coupled with a nude man shown from behind, was too much for so many.

The book Ulysses, when it was first published in 1922, was also condemned, The Sporting Times, regarded it to be the work of “a perverted lunatic who has made a speciality of the literature of the latrine.” The Dublin Review asked how “a Jesuit-trained intellect has gone over malignantly and mockingly to the powers of evil” and D.H Lawrence, who’d himself been a victim of censorship, said the book was “the dirtiest, most indecent, obscene thing ever written.” It wasn’t only British and Irish sensibilities that were offended by the book; in the USA libraries refused to stock the book, denouncing it as pornography. However it was Strick’s 1967 film which shocked Irish sensibilities most. Denounced by the authorities as being “subversive to public morality”, it remained banned in Ireland for more than three decades. 

However Strick’s film played a vital role in opening up a discussion around the merits of state imposed censorship. In the Seanad, Senator Owen Sheehy-Skeffington lambasted those who banned Ulysses, on the basis that “all state censorship was doomed to failure and is a bad thing, as one cannot legislate to make a people virtuous.” 

So here’s a chance for you to see Strick’s masterpiece on the big screen and decide for yourself. This special Bloomsday Film Screening will be followed by a discussion and Q&A about the merits of the film…

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Mon 16 June 2025

Doors: 7pm; Starts: 7.30pm

Tickets: £10

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