Finnegan’s Wake Part 2 of 3

Duration: 1600

Year Published: 1965

Creator: Expanding Cinemas

Complete Record: An experimental retelling of James Joyce's story of a single night in the life of H.C. Earwicker or Finnegan. Director Mary Ellen Bute uses innovative cinematic techniques to evoke Joyce's surrealistic style - juxtapositions, illusion, flashbacks and subtitles. Part 2: Children dancing around a woman in her wedding dress. Finnegan appears in his suit to complete this wedding scene. The two kiss and the children watch them as they continue to kiss upon a stage. Scene of man, an entertainer, dancing at a bar and singing with a cane and a hat. Shots of people drinking at a bar. Cut to scene of woman in her nightdress getting out of bed, lifting up a rug on the floor and looking down into the previous bar scene. Men in bar and Finnegan drinking, passed out on floor, being dragged by friends out of bar and into the bedroom with the woman from previous scene. Shot of woman in the bedroom holding harp and then Finnegan joining her. Scene on stage with smoke, Finnegan plays role of king, entertainer from the bar appears again with his cane to narrate the stage. Woman is in royalty outfit and suddenly snaps into a cabaret costume, dances over Finnegan’s casket. Sudden cut to an outdoor scene, woman changes costume and is lying on top of a mirror in a forest. Woman is then in wedding outfit and she goes into the bar from previous scene, runs into the park, then ends up on the beach where she meets a prince, lies down and he holds her on the sand. Shot of ocean water moving. Shot of people dancing and singing on the beach shore then tossing flowers into the ocean. Shot of a million faces in a crowd. Scene where Finnegan goes up a circular elevator, talks to this large crowd outside. Cut to Finnegan in elevator, cut back to crowd, cut back to Finnegan, and then cut back to crowd tossing things and food and Finnegan. End of part two.