RYAN’S DAUGHTER, JOE DOLAN AND DINGLE IN THE SUMMER OF 1969
Prompted by the enthusiastic Noreen Collins, manager of Charlie Byrne's bookshop in Galway, I started searching in my old Black and White archives for a picture that she wants to use for the poster of the Drimaleague singing festival, in West Cork, this September.
It was taken in Dingle, co. Kerry in the summer of 1969. The shooting of David Lean's Ryan's daughter was in full swing, or in full pause, as it kept being delayed by the weather. It was so foggy you could hardly see in front of you. Hundreds of locals, actors or not, dressed in period clothes, intermingled in and out of alleyways in a pea soup that made the whole scene completely surreal.
Barna's Sweeney's men, Joe Dolan, his pregnant wife Betty, my Belgian girlfriend Miou, and I had elected residence in a an old two men's tent at the back of Flaherty's “singing” pub, as it was then known. We were facing the ocean, 100 yards away, but could only guess his presence, now and again when the fog lifted for a minute. We seem to spend 24 hours a day in Flaherty's, drinking pints, listening to songs, local yarns and proper parlance by the English film crew, who also had chosen Flaherty's as their general headquarter.
That was what you could call a real PUBLIC HOUSE. We all had an amazing time that summer.
If the weather cleared off for an hour, Joe and I would shoot a “WESTERN” on his old 8mm camera, following a mischievous plot that we made as we went along. (I so often wondered what happened to that film? I should ask Betty who is living somewhere in New York).
I, eventually found two or three grainy rolls of film that I had taken one evening in the pub when we all were celebrating God knows what with the film crew, and I scanned them. Although not great technically ( it’s all shot on an old Leica M2 on Kodak Recording stock rated at 6400 ASA), it seems that the more pints one ingested, the less accurate the light metering became. AND I find these images really touching. First of all, I had not seen them for 56 years. Second, I was 21 and had all my life in front of me. Third, these images look so genuine to me; real people in a real pub.
Not a Telly or a mobile phone in sight, just all of us interacting with one another for an evening and a night.
Everyone smoked, everyone drank, no one questioned anything.
We were all grateful to be there, in a warm companionship, away from the reality of the fog outside.
