So exciting! We’ve been waiting, and now it is here.
James Marsh’s ‘Dance First,’ Starring Gabriel Byrne as Samuel Beckett, to Close San Sebastian Film Festival
“Dance First,” a portrait of Irish writer Samuel Beckett starring Gabriel Byrne and directed by Oscar winner James Marsh, will close this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival, playing out of competition.
The closing film screening, on Sept. 30, will mark the film’s world premiere.
Byrne, a memorable lead in “The Usual Suspects” and “Miller’s Crossing” who also won a Golden Globe for his performance in “In Treatment,” plays Beckett. The Nobel Prize-winning playwright was a Parisian bon vivant and WWII resistance fighter who became a recluse, living the last years of his life in a single room in a nursing home, ashamed of past actions and convinced that for much of his life he had been a failure.
The synopsis provided by the San Sebastian Film Festival tells us more:
Literary genius Samuel Beckett lived a life of many parts: Parisian bon vivant, WWII Resistance fighter, Nobel Prize-winning playwright, philandering husband, recluse. But despite all the adulation that came his, way he was a man acutely aware of his own failings. Titled after Beckett’s famous ethos “Dance first, think later,” the film is a sweeping account of the life of this 20th-century icon.
Gabriel looking professorial in a turtleneck and tweeds will have to sustain us!
Visit the festival’s website to discover the diverse and exciting line-up of films planned for this year. One of Gabriel’s directors from a previous film, Endless Night, is bringing her latest to the festival. Isabel Coixet’s Un Amor is part of the official selection.
And the latest creation from Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke), entitled The Boy and the Heron, opens the festival.
Will Gabriel attend the festival? No way to know. I do know that we are all there in spirit and we wish him, director James Marsh, and all involved in the making of this film the very best! heart
Dear Stella–Sometimes late, but always present for this news. All the best for this new film of our dear Gabriel’s. He is excellent in all his roles. And I am waiting for the special notices. The best to all of you who visit these pages.