The Postcolonial Graham Greene in Neil Jordan's the End Of

Hollyfield: The Postcolonial Graham Greene in Neil Jordan’s <i>The End of the Affair</i> Catholic Adaptation, global economic entities such as Hollywood affects filmmakers still Irish Conversion: The contending with the legacies of Postcolonial Graham colonialism.2 As Kevin Rockett writes, whether Greene in Neil working in Ireland or Hollywood, Jordan’s The End of Jordan’s work seems to “focus on notions of transgression, perceived the Affair normality and appearance. Put simply, Jordan allows his characters to explore and challenge borders so that they may Jerod R. Hollyfield be comfortable with their own identity. These borders are most often of a sexual During his four-decade film career, nature, but are necessarily social and Academy Award-winning cultural.”3 Jordan’s Irish films such as writer/director Neil Jordan has Michael Collins (1996), his historical transcended conventions and crossed dramatization of the Irish revolutionary, national boundaries to create an oeuvre and The Butcher Boy (1997), his of critically acclaimed films in a variety adaptation of novelist Patrick McCabe’s of genres. However, despite his account of an Irish adolescent’s life reputation as an internationally during the Cold War, directly address recognized author and filmmaker whose tumultuous political periods in Ireland’s projects have received financing from history while other works, such as the both American and European fairy tale Ondine (2009) and the production companies, Jordan has come vampire drama Byzantium (2012), mine under fire as the quintessential example his county’s Gothic mythology. Likewise, of the “schizophrenic identity” of Irish his most famous film, The Crying Game directors who migrate to Hollywood (1992), and his second McCabe after local success, a filmmaker who, adaptation, Breakfast on Pluto (2005), according to Michael Patrick Gillespie, employ transgender characters within has seen his Irish cinematic sensibilities the framework of Irish Republican Army “continually fighting against ingestion conflicts to emphasize the liminal 1 into a larger American ethos.” identity of his homeland. Even Jordan’s Regardless of such critiques, Jordan has “schizophrenic” North American-funded remained, first and foremost, an Irish films such as his adaptation of Anne artist, injecting his interpretations of the Rice’s Interview with the Vampire struggle for Irish identity into both his (1994), the psychological horror film In films and fiction directly and Dreams (1999), the gambling drama The metaphorically, traits that position him Good Thief (2002), the vigilante action as a seminal figure for understanding film The Brave One (2007), and the how the all-encompassing reach of 1 Michael Patrick Gillespie, The Myth of an Irish novels The Past (1980), The Dream of a Cinema: Approaching Irish-Themed Films Beast (1983), Sunrise with Sea Monster (1994), (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008), Shade (2005), Mistaken (2011), The Drowned 235-36. Detective (2016), and Carnivalesque (2017). 2 Jordan is also a prolific and acclaimed fiction 3 Kevin Rockett, “The Miracle” in The Cinema of writer whose works include the short story Britain and Ireland, ed. Brian McFarlane (New collection, Night in Tunisia (1976), and the York: Wallflower Press, 2005), 209. 71 Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2020 1 Graham Greene Studies, Vol. 2 [2020], Art. 13 stalker thriller Greta (2019) concern Greene’s novel, its status as an outsider protagonists attempting to adaptation of British literature by an solidify their identities in alienating Irish filmmaker that reconstructs its establishment cultures, extensions of his source text’s London narrative allows it Irish outlook to his Hollywood work.4 to interrogate the complex web of In a body of films so concerned with relationships among colonial discourse, formulating a coherent Irish identity, Irish independence, and the global film Jordan’s adaptation of Graham Greene’s industry. Discussing the pervasiveness 1951 novel The End of the Affair (1999) of fidelity criticism that aspires to initially appears as an anomaly. comparative analysis of films and source Detailing a four-year long affair between texts in adaptation studies, Anne-Marie author Maurice Bendrix and Sarah Scholz deliberates on the intricacies that Miles, the wife of a British civil servant, such a methodology overlooks: against the backdrop of London in the “Concrete material interests, political beginning and aftermath of World War and ideological differences, and power II, the novel never deviates from its relations based upon such variables as English setting, eschewing direct gender, nationality, and class all mould references to Britain’s relationship with the ways texts are transformed into the colonial holdings, including Ireland, other media and received by audiences over which the waning Empire was in very concrete, materialistic ways.”7 losing its supremacy. Jordan’s Consequently, Jordan’s choice to adaptation of this particular Greene text maintain general fidelity to the novel appears even more peculiar considering situates the adaptation as a deferential that Greene neither shied away from yet subversive take on Greene with an discussing the implications of embedded Irish positionality that colonialism in works such as Journey highlights the ambivalent relationship Without Maps (1936), The Heart of the between Greene’s cultural role in the Matter (1948), and The Quiet American Empire and his appeal in Ireland as well (1955) nor remained an isolated English as other nations under imperial author as he frequently traveled to dominion. Though a vocal critic of colonial territories such as Kenya, empire, Greene still maintained an elite Malaya, and French Indochina, status in British culture that diluted his especially during the early 1950s when indictments of colonialism. As Elleke he was writing The End of the Affair.5 As Boehmer writes of Greene and his a longtime admirer of Greene, Jordan contemporaries such as George Orwell aimed to faithfully translate the novel to and Evelyn Waugh: “Bourgeois, Britain- film in contrast to Edward Dmytryk’s centered, and basically still imperial in 1955 Hollywood adaptation starring their perceptions, the 1930s writers did Deborah Kerr and Peter Cushing.6 not come close to committed anti- Yet while Jordan’s film appears to colonial critique. In theory they sought maintain an overarching fidelity to challenges to the system, but in practice 4 The Good Thief is a remake of Jean-Pierre 6 Maria Pramaggiore, Neil Jordan (Chicago: Melville’s Bob le flambeur (1955). University of Illinois Press, 2008), 131. 5 Michael G. Brennan, Graham Greene: Fictions, 7 Anne-Marie Scholz, From Fidelity to History: Faith and Authorship (London: Continuum, Film Adaptations as Cultural Events in the 2010), 99. Twentieth Century (Berghahn, New York, 2013), 3. 72 https://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/ggs/vol2/iss1/13 2 Hollyfield: The Postcolonial Graham Greene in Neil Jordan’s <i>The End of the Affair</i> they stayed just this side of cultural lines in the landscape.”11 Fully aware of frontiers. Most of their work, therefore, Greene and his contemporaries’ roles both illustrates and enacts the difficulty within English colonial discourse, of escaping the confines of British male Jordan connects the veiled traces of the class privilege and its assumptions of Empire present in the novel’s imagery global authority.”8 Boehmer’s critique is and its conflicts between reason and even more applicable to Greene given Catholicism to rupture fault lines and what Mark Bosco refers to as the magnify them as pointed critiques of author’s shaping “by the literary British colonialism, responding to the heritage of the Victorian and Edwardian imperial power that continues to assert age that was a staple of his early political and cultural influence over his reading” and included such luminaries native Ireland. of colonial-adventure writing as Joseph Although Jordan’s adaptation of Conrad, H. Rider Haggard, and G. K. Greene’s novel fosters discussion of the Chesterton.9 For Jordan, Boehmer’s author’s anti-imperialist gestures within discussion of the relationship between the context of colonial discourse, his male class privilege and global authority choice to adapt a novel by Greene and serves as the central preoccupation of not the other colonial writers Boehmer his adaptation. Contrasting Greene’s references also provides him the more overt colonial narratives, The End opportunity to address the role of global of the Affair seems a text more capital so vital to the cultural hegemony concerned with portraying a semi- of Hollywood filmmaking, which, along autobiographical account of Greene’s with the British film industry, has been struggles with Catholicism and his responsible for the majority of filmic romantic triangle with aristocrats representations of the Irish.12 Unlike Catherine and Harry Walston during a many of his British contemporaries, stint in Capri than discussing the Greene worked steadily in the film twilight years of British imperialism.10 industry both as a critic and a Through the adaptation process screenwriter.13 Writing for numerous however, Jordan applies what Kevin publications, including The Spectator Rockett, Luke Gibbins, and John Hill and Sight & Sound, Greene crafted a see as a hallmark of Irish cinema—not definition of what he called “the poetic disowning Irish romanticism and cinema” in his criticism, a type of film mysticism, but prying “open these that would break middle-class movie fissures, exposing the ideological fault- audiences away from, as Greene wrote, 8 Elleke Boehmer, Colonial and Postcolonial 12 Ibid., 147. Literature: Migrant Metaphors, 2nd ed. 13 Though his most notable screenplays were The (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005), 152. Fallen Idol (1948), The Third Man (1949), and 9 Mark Bosco, “From The Power and the Glory Our Man in Havana (1959), Greene also wrote to The Honorary Consul: The Development of the screenplays for less well-received Graham Greene's Catholic Imagination” adaptations of his own works Brighton Rock Religion & Literature 36.2 (Summer 2004), 56. (1948), Loser Takes All (1956), and The 10 Robert L.

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