Dance First

Dance First (2023)

Think later.

Parisian bon vivant, World War II Resistance fighter, Nobel Prize-winning playwright, philandering husband and recluse…Samuel Beckett lived a life of many parts. Titled after Beckett’s famous ethos “Dance first, think later”, the film is a sweeping account of the life of this 20th-century icon.

Date of release
2023-11-03
TMDB
6.6 / 10 (27)
Runtime
1h 40m
Genres
History, Drama
Director
James Marsh

Casting

Interesting facts

Dance First is a 2023 biographical film about Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, directed by James Marsh and written by Neil Forsyth. Gabriel Byrne stars as Beckett, with a supporting cast featuring Fionn O'Shea as a younger Beckett and Aidan Gillen as James Joyce.

Production

In November 2021, it was announced that James Marsh was to direct the bio-pic with Gabriel Byrne playing Beckett from a screenplay from Neil Forsyth and a title taken from Beckett's ethos on life of "Dance first, think later". Byrne said he was attracted to the project by Forsyth’s “extremely clever” script which he called a “a surreal interpretation, that has something to do with the spirit of Beckett”.

In May 2022, it was announced that Aidan Gillen joined the cast along with Sandrine Bonnaire and Fionn O'Shea as a younger Samuel Beckett. Gillen confirmed to The Times that his role was that of James Joyce and that Marsh is “a great film-maker, so the Beckett story is in good hands.” In September 2022, it was revealed that Maxine Peake, Robert Aramayo, Leonie Lojkine, Bronagh Gallagher, Lisa Dwyer Hogg, Barry O'Connor and Gráinne Good had joined…

Principal photography began in Budapest in May 2022. Filming locations in Budapest included the corner of Gerlóczy utca and Vitkovics Mihály utca, the steps of the Vígszínház, Dohány utca, the lobby of Hotel Gellért and the New York Kávéház.

On set in Budapest Byrne was interviewed by The Guardian and described the project as an effort to flesh out a character whom “people know very little about. He was a man who had a sense of humour, who was deeply emotional, who was a failure in his own eyes for a great deal of his life”.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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