A Sense of Loss

Though the BBC's rejection of Ophüls' documentary in 1972 added fuel to the arguments of those who maintained that a conspiracy of silence operated regarding reportage of events in Northern Ireland, the fact is that his film is not particularly enlightening. Ophüls' partisanship is undisguised from very early on, but it's still difficult to forgive the way he loads the evidence (Bernadette Devlin interviewed on a deserted beach, Paisley fulminating from his pulpit); and the long funeral sequence at the end is shot and edited as all-stops-out melodrama. When left to speak for themselves, the spokesmen for the British presence and some of the more bigoted Protestants are sufficiently eloquent in condemning themselves without interference from Ophüls' self-satisfied liberal smugness. Still, in the absence of anything better...