This Other Eden

This Other Eden (1959) was one of the first films produced by Emmet Dalton in the newly formed Ardmore Studios, and was the first Irish feature film to be directed by a woman, Muriel Box. The film explores the traumatic legacy of the Civil War, and in particular the impact of the death of Michael Collins on successive generations. Given that Emmet Dalton was with Collins the day he was shot, some critics have speculated that this film was an attempt to redress, even rewrite the history of that time. However, like the Louis D’Alton play on which it is based, This Other Eden is not just a critique of the past but a witty and complex satire of an emergent modern Ireland in the late 1950s. Fidelma Farley traces the genealogy of the text from Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island to D’Alton’s Abbey play and Box’s film. Using unpublished archival material (including Muriel Box’s personal diaries), Farley reclaims this little-known Irish classic by firmly rooting it in the cultural context of the Lemass era.