Classification: NR

The constraints placed upon film-makers by the primitive nature of early sound recording equipment only partly explain Alfred Hitchcock's failure to transfer Sean O'Casey's celebrated play about the Irish Civil War successfully to the screen. Although an admirer of the material, which concerns an Irish family who think they have come into money, he found it stubbornly uncinematic and ended up staging the action in a calcified manner that barely reflected either the flavoursome characterisation or the powerful blend of wit and tragedy. However, Sara Allgood (who had also appeared in Hitch's Blackmail) excels as Juno Boyle, thus creating the mould for every forbidding Hitchcock mother to come.