The lost snapshot of an Ireland they didn't want you to see.

(From Irish Independent)

Peter Lennon's ground-breaking film from the 1960s, The Rocky Road to Dublin, has re-emerged after being restored. It was both a unique record of Irish social history and a victim of it, writes Philip Molloy

Because of Original Sin, we are born without sanctifying grace, our intellect is darkened, our will is weakened, our passions incline us to evil and we are subject to suffering and death. These are the first words spoken in Peter Lennon's historic documentary movieThe Rocky Road To Dublin which goes on release here next week after being effectively banned for almost four decades.

A slight, curly-haired boy recites the words with deadened conviction as he looks straight into the camera. Then there is a cut to a plain card showing the title as The Dubliners launch into the theme song. The boy is the 70-minute movie's simple signature, his dull, bespectacled eyes declaring his religious beliefs in the unmodulated cadences of a brainwash victim.

Later, four other youngsters, advertisements for the rote-learning system so beloved of Irish primary schools, will express themselves on illicit sex and other "hits" of the Catholic Cathecism in comparable fashion.

In the autumn of 1968, Peter Lennon had turned up on the doorsteps of Synge Street Christian Brothers school in Dublin, accompanied by the renowned French cameraman, Raoul Coutard, and, like some Department of Education inspector, asked to examine the boys in their Cathecism. He was welcomed by the superior and the Church was allowed to damn itself from its own mouth.

This is one of the main themes of the film, that the people, taken in by the "jolly uncles" of the Catholic Church, conspired with them to deny the objectives of those who had founded this republic. During the course of his two-part, two-week shoot in Dublin, Lennon also asked to be allowed to accompany a Catholic priest as he went about his duties. The heavy hand of irony then forced its way into the picture and the Church produced Fr Michael Cleary as a camera-ready example of where it was going and what it was trying to do.