A rare 1958 film restored by the Irish Film Archive, She Didn't Say No! has been chosen for screening at the preservation film festival, To Save and Project, which runs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from May 26th to June 17th.
Based on Cork author Una Troy's factually based 1955 novel, We Are Seven, the film stars Eileen Herlie as a dressmaker held in low regard in her village because she is the mother of six illegitimate children, two of them twins, by five different fathers. Provoked by his wife, the father of the twins conspires with the other lovers to have the children removed from her care.
Filmed by English director Cyril Frankel, the drama also features Niall McGinnis, Ray McAnally, Liam Redgrave, Ian Bannen, Jack McGowran, Joan O'Hara, Hilton Edwards (playing a film director), Maureen Halligan and Anna Manahan. The film was regarded as so immoral that the Irish censor banned it in 1958. It was considered lost until a badly decomposed print was discovered in a film distributor's collection in 2002. A successful grant application to the Heritage Council allowed the Irish Film Archive to commission a restored new print with remastered sound.
It will be interesting to monitor how the film is received after all this time. Kevin Rockett's valuable reference book, The Irish Filmography, quotes generally negative reviews from the UK press in 1958. "As an entertainment, the film is mediocre as well as mildly offensive," noted the Monthly Film Bulletin, while the News Chronicle dismissed it as "over-fragrant, Blarneyed baloney".
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