Friday, January 6, 2012

Silent Scores – Scores of Silents

The Artist isn’t the only silent masterpiece to screen in IFI this week. On Monday, January 9th we launch a new series of must-see cinema from the IFI Irish Film Archive with Come On Over  – an absolute cracker made in the original silent era in 1922.  


The film which we acquired recently from our friends at MoMA, New York, is a lively comedy about a young man who emigrates from a thatched cottage in the bucolic backwater of Lisdoonvarna to a rooming house in the bustling metroplis of New York leaving behind his beloved, Moyna, and his clay-pipe-smoking mother. Full of romantic misunderstanding and merry japes and peopled with society dames and drunks and smiling Irish cops, Come On Over features a brilliant cast of Irish and Irish American players including the dashing Ralph Graves, the indomitable ingénue Colleen Moore, and the wonderful comedienne Cork-born Kate Price. 


It’s a joy from start to finish, not least for the inter-titles written in a bizarre Oirish brogue. Some of my favourites include “But, Shane darlin’, you’re making me your widdy before you make me your wife!”; “It’s my little Moyna or her fetch – Only your voice is taller than it once was”; “It’s yourself that’s had the use of the May dew on her cheeks” and there’s lots more where those came from.

Adding to the entertainment and creating a live musical soundtrack will be the clever musical underscoring by pianist, Morgan Cooke and the lively jigs of piper Maitiú O Caiseide.

Sunniva O'Flynn
IFI Curator

All proceeds go to the IFI Irish Film Archive Preservation Fund
For more information on Monthly Must-See Cinema and Come on Over, please visit www.ifi.ie or call the IFI Box Office on 01-679 3477.

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