ULYSSES

 The one utterly 'unfilmable' novel was indeed filmed, and with a fair degree of success, by Joseph Strick in 1967. "Ulysses" is set over the course of one day, June 16th, 1904 in Dublin, now celebrated annually as 'Bloomsday' in deference to the book's central character, Leopold Bloom but Strick chose to update it to the time the film was made perhaps on the basis that the novel itself is 'timeless' or maybe on the basis that the events depicted could have happened at any time. It charts a journey through Dublin by Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, the young teacher and hero of Joyce's more accessible "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man".

It is, of course, the book that sits on the shelves of the intelligentsia, mostly unread, but essential to show off; the stream of consciousness novel to end them all. On the other hand, it may have gone unread for years as it was originally banned in most countries on the grounds of obscenity. That the film works at all is a great credit to Strick but mostly the critics didn't go for it feeling, perhaps, that the director over-simplified it, changing the text and that the updating was tantamount to sacrilege. He also chose to shoot it in widescreen when the material may have cried out for something more intimate but it is superbly shot by Wolfgang Suschitzky while the cast are mostly splendid. Milo O'Shea is a superb Bloom and Barbara Jefford is outstanding as his wife, Molly while the Dublin locations now add up to a great time capsule of what life was like there in the mid-sixties.