A Lost World

View Comments

• Various impressions. I love the complex expression that crosses Evelyn’s face at the film’s conclusion, after the girls have danced the Hucklebuck. I credit the Irish with being able to sing “Happy Birthday” IN TUNE! The obit of Mr. Folan describes him more than once as soft-spoken, and this trait is prominent in Evelyn as well. Her manner of speaking is precise, thoughtful, and gently self-effacing. I’m just noting things out of order while they’re fresh immediately after viewing the documentary. The nuns’ habits are so formidable! The classroom routines are marked by severe regimentation viewed from a more “modern” perspective. Who’s to say it didn’t serve learning in many respects? I taught high school for 10 years, and even so I’m not armored with strong opinions on how it should be done. What’s to be said about the sister’s mention of “air hostesses and belly dancers” as airy aspirations girls might have besides becoming nuns? I’ve leapt to imagining what the modern analog for boys might be: Cage fighters and stuntmen? I enjoyed the documentary, Josie. Thanks for highlighting it.

  • I think it was "ballet" dancers although I first heard it the way you did.
    Thanks for all the observations jim.
    So many little things - the excitement over a watch and how today we take such things for granted. The comfortable middle class life (birthday cakes and bicycles and record changers). Wanting to sit in the back row to avoid the teacher. Missionary work in Africa. and yes - everyone singing in tune! And of course Evelyn who went to mass every morning and didn't like to cook.

• I think that what strikes me most - after thinking about it for a while - is how respectful the documentary is. Respectful of Evelyn, her family, her school, and her aspirations.

  It doesn't make claims beyond its story - of one devout and intelligent middle-class girl in Ireland who, at the time of her thirteenth birthday, thought she wanted to be a nun.

  But most of all - respectful of the audience. we are not told what to think and how to feel. We are allowed to make up our own minds about this remarkable girl - in this place at this moment - and what we might think and hope for her future.

  Because of that integrity we have an insight into one small nugget of the past.

• I'm curious why the BBC did that piece. It's all too terribly perfect in every way. It took me back to my days 1962-64 with the nuns who were mostly Irish. I would much rather they had filmed the family the way I imagine they may have been!
  It's funny to think that BBC commentators all used to sound this way. These days it's rather like the fingernail on a blackboard to me! how one evolves!

  • Broadcast voices have changed so much.
    Wondering now how you imagined the family to have been.
    I think I really liked it because it took me to somewhere that was both familiar and yet entirely strange.

• I love those archive films and I hadn't seen that one - what lovely manners they have and I'm glad her father wanted her to see the world!

  • Both the father and the nun - Sister Declan? - sounded quite sensible on the subject. (Given the time and place and all the rest.) As she says - many children at thirteen think they want to be something only later to change their minds.