Full of romance and melancholy, I Was Happy Here is a wistful and moving look at lost love and memory. Screened with love in memory of Edna O’Brien (1930-2024).

I Was Happy Here (also known as Time Lost and Time Remembered) is the second movie in the Edna O’Brien ‘trilogy’ directed by Desmond Davis (The Girl with Green Eyes and The Country Girls). Cass had followed the bright lights to London, but quickly became disillusioned. After she met and married Doctor Langdon, she realised she wanted to go home, hoping to find love with the sweetheart she left behind. The action of the film takes place over one evening, interspersed with flashbacks from varying perspectives. Starring Sarah Miles, Julian Glover, Cyril Cusack, Sean Caffrey, Eve Belton and directed by Desmond Davis, who directed The Girl with Green Eyes, which had been adapted by Edna O’Brien from her autobiographical novel The Lonely Girl.

Edna O’Brien wrote more than two dozen novels and short story collections, plays, memoirs, children’s books and a collection of poems.

“Edna O’Brien is not a writer within a conscious literature. She owes nothing to any predecessor or to any tradition. She is a writer with one theme, women who love and suffer.” Nuala O’Faolain, 1983

Runtime: 91 minutes