Word: gretta
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...greatly that his first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, is considered nearly biographical. For many of his female characters, who seem even more real and human than the male characters which Joyce based on himself and his experiences, he drew on Nora. Molly, Gretta Conroy in The Dead, Anna Livia Plurabelle in Finnegans Wake all bear striking resemblences to Nora...
...party, a tenor sings an old air, The Lass of Aughrim. This puts Gretta Conroy (Anjelica Huston) in a pensive mood: a delicate young man she once loved, and who hastened his death by courting her, used to sing it. In their hotel room, Gretta tells her husband Gabriel (Donal McCann) about this lost love, arousing an unworthy jealousy. She falls asleep, and he stares out the window, as the snow -- symbol of the universe's indifference to petty social preoccupations and petty emotions too -- falls "upon all the living and the dead." Nature, playing no favorites, blankets them...
Even though Huston nearly died several times last year, no one connected with the film is calling it a valedictory. "I spent every moment of my childhood thinking he was going to drop dead any minute," says his daughter Anjelica Huston, 35, who plays the heroine, Gretta Conroy. "He's been brought to his knees in the past four years, but he won't lie down. This project is certainly close to his heart, but not because of any imminent decay...
...offers a special challenge. Lights, camera, no action. "The movie doesn't have a single automobile chase," notes the director dryly. "No gun duels. The biggest piece of action is trying to pass the port." On a snowy Dublin evening during the Christmas season, Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta attend his maiden aunts' annual dinner dance. He is a smug, possessive "stout tallish young man," who is preparing some after-dinner remarks with allusions to Browning and classical antiquity that, he fears, will sail over the heads of his unsophisticated audience...
...equilibrium. A harmless pleasantry to the maid about her marriage prospects is rewarded with an unexpectedly bitter rebuke about men. A brief turn on the dance floor with a young woman results in a discomfiting discussion of Irish patriotism. Finally, the innocuous singing of a melancholy Irish air leads Gretta down a bitter path of memory that results in a crushing revelation, of a past life and an unforgotten lover who died for love...