Finnegans Wake on Film

Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake

Check out the film here:

http://www.ubu.com/film/joyce_wake.html

This 1965 film by Mary Ellen Bute pulses with surrealistic imagery and selected passages from Joyce's text. This was the first attempt to cinematize Finnegans Wake, and was loosely based on a stage version. Bute was considered a pioneer in the field of abstract and animated film. In this adaptation, a television reporter becomes the narrator, and images of nuclear explosions and cavemen are intercut with the wake itself. We discovered it on UbuWeb and projected it on a wall before one of our readings. Often hilarious, it actually brought the words to life in sometimes ingenious ways. To even attempt to make visual sense of Finnegans Wake, Mary Bute should be commended. As a compendium to an oral recitation, the film provides an interesting angle.