Legendary film-maker John Huston's final film was also one that saw him fulfilling one his long cherished dreams - bringing James Joyce's short story to the big screen.

Very much a family affair, it saw Huston in the director's chair, his daughter Anjelica playing the key role of Gretta and his son Tony adapting Joyce's novella for the screen.

Set in Dublin in 1904, the story centres around an after-Christmas party thrown by the elderly Misses Kate and Julia Morkan and their music teacher niece Mary Jane.

The soiree - discretely stage-managed by nephew Gabriel (McCann) and his wife Gretta - revolves around recitations delivered by the urbane guests and the occasional formal dance before the party settles down to a goose dinner.

However, beneath the festivities it's possible to divine dissonant tones - one guest's firebrand republicanism and the genial embarrassment of old soak Freddy Malins, exquisitely played by Donal Donnelly, who provides a plethora of "I'll get me coat" moments.

Things take a decidedly sombre tone when Gretta - her memory jolted by the song The Lass of Aughrim - recounts, for the first time to her husband, the story of a besotted young man and potential suitor from her youth who died aged just 17.

It's a masterfully melancholic stroke and one which brings out in Gabriel feelings of jealousy and sadness that he has never felt the passion of the doomed boy.

Now available in a new print, The Dead, although based in the early part of the last century and filmed in 1987, deals with issues that are just as relevant today.

"I hear you write for the Daily Express. Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" one guest asks of Gabriel. Some things never change.

Tim Evans