AllMovie

Adapted by Judith Rascoe from James Joyce's first novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is told through the eyes of Joyce's alter ego Stephen Dedalus. Played by Bosco Hogan, Dadelus comes of age in many ways when he attends Dublin University. The film retains Joyce's pointed, inquisitive barbs at Catholicism, a fact that caused as nearly much uneasiness in 1977 as it did when the novel was first published. Also retained are vestiges of Joyce's stream-of-consciousness technique, though producer/director Joseph Strick adopts a more cinematic narrative approach. In 1967, Strick had produced the film version of Joyce's Ulysses; several of the cast members of that earlier film (T. P. McKenna, Rosaleen Linehan, Maureen Potter) are reunited for Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man.