Captain Lightfoot

Captain Lightfoot

1955. USA. Directed by Douglas Sirk. Screenplay by W. R. Burnett, based on his novel. With Rock Hudson, Barbara Rush, Jeff Morrow, Dennis O’Dea. Douglas Sirk’s remarkable and infrequently screened picture is a 19th-century period piece, shot on location in Ireland to evoke (as the film’s opening titles put it) a country “of deep, black rivers and red-coated dragoons riding through a land bitter with resistance against foreign rule, the Ireland of secret societies and highwaymen on the Dublin road, the Ireland of dark deeds performed with a light heart.” Indeed, there is a lightness and wry intelligence that animates this story about the adventures of a young revolutionary. “Rock Hudson was playing comedy,” Sirk once noted in an interview, “and I realized his talents might lie there.” 35mm print from The Museum of the Modern Art; courtesy NBC Universal. 92 min.