This Other Eden (1959) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by Fint ★★★½

  A fine conclusion to the revelatory Muriel Box season at the BFI, This Other Eden is an Irish comedy/drama that deals with hypocrisy, heritage, heroes and Anglo-Irish relations - standard Irish concerns, in other words.

  Muriel Box was imported to become the first female director of an Irish film and she deals with the film's modest production circ*mstances capably and efficiently. It's the adaptation of a play produced in Dublin in 1953 and original cast members from the Abbey Theatre recreate roles for the film. Niall McGinnis was already well known on British screens but a standout performance from Milo O'Shea kickstarted his film career. Leslie Phillips is hilarious as the Englishman so in love with Irish culture that he…

• Review by Cate ★★★½

  You may find the Irish hating you – in the past, they've every reason to – but always remember, it's your duty not to hate them. Where Ireland is concerned, it's for the English to remember and the Irish to forget... you can't have any conception if the crimes we English have committed against these people in the past.

  I was fascinated to find out Muriel Box was the first female director of an Irish feature film, and not only that – that This Other Eden gives voice to fervent anti-English sentiment and the colonial violence at its root. This Other Eden is also just plain fun – I loved the vivid community colour and the closely-observed humour, especially in the first half.

• Review by MoMA Film

  This Other Eden is the first Irish feature film directed by a woman, Muriel Box, one of Britain’s most prolific female filmmakers. Perhaps the combination was fitting: Anglo-Irish relations is among the many topics—including emigration, political hypocrisy, the wealth of the Catholic Church, and the legacy of the Irish War of Independence and Civil War—covered in this mordant comedy.

  Hibernophile Crispin Brown (Leslie Phillips of Carry On fame, who recently passed away) meets Máire McRoarty (Audrey Dalton) en route to Ballymorgan, where the Englishman hopes to settle now that World War II has ended. He must face the suspicions of the townspeople when the statue of the local patriot martyr is destroyed, leading to the revelation of long-hidden secrets.

  Producer…

• Review by Timothy ★★★½

  Perhaps it's a bit too tidy, and perhaps it's rather basic on production value, but I still found this particularly interesting and worthwhile among the filmography of Muriel Box. Apparently the first Irish feature to be directed by a woman, This Other Eden is the kind of progressive-for-its-time story that might fall short of being profound, but still makes some cracks in the reductive bigotry of most mainstream fare.

  Well-intentioned liberal movies that center a Sympathetic Historical Oppressor who has some incomplete but actual degree of reckoning with their privilege (but it all works out for them in the end because after all they are the Hero of the Tale) – movies like these are hardly radical. But I've seen…

• Review by Steve Carlson ★★★★

  Splendid, modest culture-clash comedy of errors with a real caustic wit.

• Review by Colleen ★★★

  It’s both too twisty and too neat, but grapples with some interesting stuff about political myth making, especially in the Irish context. The highlight was the colorful assortment of side characters, who had all the best lines and funniest moments.

• Review by _l__rogers ★★★★

  Had a really good time. Really funny.

  Brand new 4k restoration by IFI Irish Film Archive in collaboration with the BFI. First Irish feature film ever directed by a woman. Looked fantastic.

• Review by Emma Keyes ★★★★

  so much funnier than i was expecting! some interesting ideas about nationalism and revising history and the justness and lack of such in social norms.

• Review by Paul D ★★

  An Englishman travels to a small Irish town with the intention of setting up home there at the same time that a young man returns home from university. Meanwhile the town is erecting a statue to a hero of the revolution to whom both men have a connection.

  Don't be fooled into thinking that just because this stars Leslie Phillips it's some kind of The Quiet Man style gentle comedy, or even a comedy at all. Phillips is a dreadfully earnest Englishman who is filled with guilt about the oppression of the Irish and is overly keen to point it out to all and sundry, he doth, if you will, protest too much.

  In fact he does so to the…