Review of Juno and the Paycock

Adapting a heavy-handed play into a successful film is a gamble which can produce a masterpiece, like O'Neill's A LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT, or a complete misfire such as in this case. O'Casey's JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK, considered one of his greatest works, could and should have been a better, more mobile dramatic film under the hand of Alfred Hitchcock who had already produced THE LODGER and BLACKMAIL -- early masterpieces of suspense -- but it seems as though the Director did not really know the material or did not know how to approach such a story in a visual way. There are times when the story becomes so still that it seems as though one is watching paint dry. What saves the film from total oblivion is the very theatrical performance of Sara Allgood as Juno Boyle: she carries the emotional weight of the drama that plays itself out, and her outcry at the end is very potent. Hitchcock would only direct another similarly themed movie called THE SKIN GAME two years later, but it's clear that at this point of his career he was experimenting with sound and would move on to much better films as the Thirties progressed.