Rocky Road to Dublin (film)

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Rocky Road to Dublin

Directed by	Peter Lennon
Starring	Sean O'Faoláin Conor Cruise O'Brien John Huston
Cinematography	Raoul Coutard
Release date(s)	1967
Running time	69 min.
Country	Ireland
Language	English
IMDb profile

Rocky Road to Dublin is a 1967 documentary film by Irish-born journalist Peter Lennon and French cinematographer Raoul Coutard, examining the contemporary state of the Republic of Ireland, posing the question, "what do you do with your revolution once you've got it." In particular it examines state censorship, cultural isolationism, and the Catholic clergy’s grip on education and family life. Although shot in colour, it was printed in black-and-white, partly because the unstable film stock used, and partly because Lennon thought that monochrome was more in keeping with the tone of the film.

The film could not be officially banned, since it contained no sex, but the Irish government did prevent it from being screened in cinemas or by state broadcaster RTÉ. After a single press screening in Dublin in 1967 - which provoked a hostile reaction from newspapers and the state broadcaster RTÉ - Lennon entered it for that year's Cork Film Festival, but it was rejected on the grounds that it had already been showed in the capital. It was only when the film was chosen to represent Ireland at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival that the Cork organisers were embarrassed into changing their decision, but gave it a lunchtime screening on the day that all the media covering the Festival were invited, "to a free oyster-and-Guinness lunch in Kenmare, 70 miles away."^[1] Lennon organised his own screening in Cork the following day, the resulting furore leading to a single Dublin cinema giving it a seven week run to packed audiences.

At Cannes, it was chosen as one of eight films to be shown during critics' week at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, but immediately after the screening Couthard's sometime collaborators François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard declared the Festival suspended in sympathy with the Paris students' strike, leading to a furious debate with Lennon and other filmmakers present. Despite this, screenings were organised for the same students, as well as striking workers besieged in the Renault plant.

The de facto ban in Ireland remained in place for more than thirty years - barring sporadic private screenings in the 1990s - until the film was restored in 2004 by the Irish Film Board and Loopline Films. At the same time, a new documentary, The Making of Rocky Road, was made by Paul Duane, examining the history of Rocky Road, and including BBC footage of Couthard and Lennon shooting Rocky Road in 1967,^[2] and previously unseen film of the events in Cannes in 1968. Both films were released on DVD (Region 0 PAL) in 2005.