Very few films have a genuine Celtic/Pagan sensibility where environment and characters possess a mysterious and magical charge that feels authentically rooted in myth and legend. The cult favourite The Wicker Man is an obvious first choice. Then Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s still underrated Gone to Earth.
And now to complete this pantheistic star trio we have the almost forgotten The Outcasts. All draw upon folk tales and ritual. The Wicker Man feels comfortably folk horror. Gone to Earth a ripe melodrama set against the wild forces of nature. And The Outcasts impresses as a strange story hewn out of rural folklore. Its subtle combination of dream and naturalism, pitted against supernatural forces, makes The Outcasts, with its early 19th century Irish setting, a truly intense tragic tale, to be narrated by the fire.
The period is pre-famine Ireland. Maura (an amazing performance from Mary Ryan) is naïve, simple minded, dreamy and taciturn. She’s captivated and disturbed by the fairy and folk tales told by her family who bully her for being so uncommunicative. Her only support comes from her sister who’s pregnant and about to get married. At the wedding Scarf Michael (Mick Lally) the fiddler of Dooney, appears and begins to diabolically charm Maura. He performs some supernatural tricks and claims to be a conjurer but not a shaman. When the family and village learn of her meeting with Michael they begin to blame her for every misfortune that affects the community. Soon she’s called a witch and driven out of her home to escape with the mysterious Michael.
The Outcasts is riddled with ambiguities. Scarf Michael could be both a benign conjurer and/or devilish trickster. He displays affection and is sexually attracted by Maura but his command for her to see (in a visionary sense) and acknowledge her supernatural powers has tragic consequences. Maura is, on a familial level, a bullied innocent yet she’s cunning. And though not a witch she may be able to be trained as a healer (the moment on the road where she encounters a sick old man, to create a serene emphatic radiance round him is a revealing and beautifully scene). Scarf Michael is amazed by Maura’s powers that he considers greater than his own.
Is The Outcasts really a film about people simply being different, possessing rare capabilities, gifts and talents that are misunderstood by the community? That outcasts and outsiders will not be tolerated is something that the local priest, played by Paul Bennet, sympathetically understands for Maura though not for Michael whom he’s convinced is an evil man, certainly Michael feels a threat to the authority of the church. It’s fascinating to compare The Outcasts with the Nigel Kneale TV film, Murrain about an elderly female recluse who’s perceived as a 20th century witch rather than a strange difficult woman requiring help from social services. Though even here a ‘magical’ incident occurs that’s muted and ambiguous.
The great strength of The Outcasts and Murrain is their flexibility of ideas and understatement. And in the former it accompanies a dreamlike atmosphere that never becomes folk horror – more weird folk poetry with its drawing on inspiration from Yeat’s poem 'The Fiddler of Dooney' and probably his 'Crazy Jane' verses. The Outcasts is superbly cast, rugged, earthy and raw in its conception. What contributes to its bewitching strangeness is the beautiful photography (Originally 16mm film blown up to 35 mm and then 2k digitised) of Seamus Corcoran. And the film’s director Robert Wynne-Simmons reveals great confidence and skill. This feels like a love project.
On a first viewing I found The Outcasts ambiguities to be more puzzling than pleasing. It took me a second viewing next day to appreciate how powerful fused are the film’s alternative readings. That its mysteries are complimentary and not contradictory: coherently intensifying its ancient rural world view. “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” As Yeats might have applied his final questioning line, from 'Among School Children', if he’d viewed The Outcasts.
Of her birth Maura says to the priest “I know I was a mistake.” He corrects her by saying she’s only different and should speak up more to her family. Yet her silences, brooding and distracted air convey a need for respect not ridicule. Mary Ryan excels as Maura. Her performance alone makes for a memorable film. She intelligently embodies the spirit of being an outcast, instinctively comprehending Maura’s character: all of its repressed identity and lack of inner defences. Ryan’s performance is brilliant in a film that the Irish Film Industry can feel justly proud of.
The Outcasts is an important re-discovery from the 1980s and so appropriate for the BFI’s Flipside project.
- Alan Price.
Republished from London Grip https://londongrip.co.uk/
