Dance First

Samuel Beckett lived a life of many stages: joyful Parisian, Resistance fighter in World War II, Nobel Prize-winning playwright, womanizing husband and recluse. But despite all the adulation he received, he was a man very aware of his own shortcomings. In 1969, after being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, an embarrassed Beckett simply wanted to get rid of it. This film revolves around this turning point, Beckett's internal debate over which people in his life most deserve to be the beneficiaries of his shame.

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

The film documents the writer's life, from his childhood, his friendship with James Joyce to the imprisonment of the latter's mentally ill daughter, Lucia Joyce, his relationship with his future wife Suzanne Dumesnil, his stage as a French Resistance fighter during World War II, his post-war literary rise and subsequent Nobel Prize, his romance with the translator Barbara Bray and his subsequent life until his death in 1989. Throughout the film, Beckett < b>performs an internal monologue.