WITH THE country's prospects looking ever more bleak, it seems ominous that the National Concert Hall should have chosen the day after the general election – February 26th – to stage a spectacle called The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
When the show’s press release first arrived, I imagined a terrifying performance in which, to begin with, the taoiseach-elect Enda Kenny would formally open the Government books. Thenceforth known as the “Books of Revelation”, these would confirm, in the great post-election tradition, that the situation was even worse than the outgoing crowd had been letting on.
Then, four grim-faced mounted figures would enter the concert hall, vaguely recognisable as Morgan Kelly, David McWilliams, and the newly elected TDs, Shane Ross and Paul Somerville. After that, war, famine, pestilence, and mass mortgage default would be unleashed upon the audience.
A shrill trumpet blast would follow, to signal the opening of Seventh Seal. This would reveal the ultimate secret: why we had to bail out Anglo Irish Bank. And the evening would climax with the Last Judgment, following which the wicked would be cast into the Abyss, where billions of taxpayers’ money has already been cast. Then it would be all over, except of course for the weeping and gnashing of teeth.
But it turns out that the NCH is not planning anything like that. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypsein this case is only Rex Ingram's classic 1921 silent movie, based on Vicente Blasco Ibánez's novel of the same name and starring a then-unknown young actor called Rudolph Valentino.
The concert hall is screening it as a 90th anniversary tribute, apparently, with live orchestral accompaniment. And the February 26th timing has less to do with the election than with the Dublin International Film Festival, of which the performance is part. Phew – what a relief.
AT THE risk of the show’s title panicking an already-alarmed citizenry, it’s no bad thing that Rex Ingram should be celebrated again in the city where he was born. In his heyday, he was regarded by at least one Hollywood rival as “the world’s greatest director”. But apart from a plaque on his birthplace, hidden away in a corner of Grosvenor Square, Rathmines, Ingram is now largely forgotten in these parts.
It’s an amusing footnote to his former fame that the surname by which he should have been known to the world – that is, the one he inherited from his father – was “Hitchcock”. No doubt, circa 1920, this did not sound like the sort of moniker with which you could make it big in Hollywood.
Whatever the reason, when he shortened his birth-title (Reginald Ingram Montgomery Hitchcock) for professional purposes, it was his mother’s surname he retained.
One possible reason is that the name already enjoyed a certain local renown in that, back in the late 1800s, his maternal grandfather had been the first chief of Dublin Fire Brigade. As Capt Ingram, he fought many famous blazes, including one in the Theatre Royal in 1880 (which, it must be said, was not one of his more successful performances – the theatre burned to the ground.)
But in any case, the maternal name may have had more romantic connotations than the paternal one. Hitchcock Snr was a mere clergyman, who served time as a curate in the North Tipperary parishes of Nenagh and Borrisokane, before becoming rector in Kinnity, Co Offaly. It was in those places, therefore, that the future film director spent his formative years, before emigrating and becoming one of cinema’s early greats.
SPEAKING OF Borrisokane – and also of mothers, the Apocalypse, and changing identities – readers may remember that Rex Ingram’s brief residency there is not the Tipperary town’s only connection with Hollywood. No indeed.
It also gave birth to a woman who, after emigrating to the US, became the mother of actor Martin Apocalypse Now Sheen. And it was through him that, as revealed here last year, Borrisokane was about to star in a film called Stella Days, based on a book by local man Michael Doorley.
Telling the story of the town's first cinema, founded in the 1950s by the then parish priest, Stella Dayshad the potential to do for Borrisokane what Cinema Paradisodid for director Giuseppe Tornatore's home town in Sicily. In any case, Sheen was lined up for the role of the priest. And Borrisokane was widely expected to play itself.
Alas, as we have seen, cinematic identity can be a fluid concept. In the event, Borrisokane was not deemed convincing enough in the autobiographical role, which was given instead to the handsome, brooding South Tipperary town of Fethard.
Shooting there was completed in early December and the film is expected on Irish screens in the autumn. In the meantime, although Borrisokane remains its nominal setting, this is only partial consolation for locals. The town stopped short of weeping at its usurpation by Fethard, I believe, but there was some gnashing of teeth.
- fmcnally@irishtimes.com