Dead [DVD]

The Dead is a 1987 drama film directed by John Huston, written by his son Tony Huston, and starring his daughter Anjelica Huston. On January 6, 1904, spinster sisters Kate and Julia Morkan and their unmarried niece, Mary Jane, host their annual Epiphany dinner party at their town house in Dublin. Horse-drawn carriages arrive with guests on the snowy night. Three of Mary Jane's music students, Miss O'Callaghan, Miss Furlong, and Miss Higgins, enter, accompanied by the young bachelors Joseph Kerrigan and Raymond Bergin, who Miss Furlong formally introduces to Kate and her frail older sister, Julia.
Dan Brown, the only Protestant invited to the party, arrives next, followed by Kate's favorite nephew, Gabriel Conroy, and his wife, Gretta. Kate is worried that Freddy Malins will show up drunk and, when he does, Gabriel promptly escorts the man to the restroom to sober him up. After a few more drinks with Mr Brown, Freddy goes to talk to his mother, who lives in Scotland with her daughter, and Mrs Malins berates him for failing to meet her for tea earlier.
The guests dance, Mary Jane performs a virtuosic piece on the piano, and a guest named Mr. Grace recites a poem he calls "Broken Vows", which is a lament of lost love, during which Gretta's eyes grow misty. When the dancing restarts, Kate pairs Gabriel with Molly Ivors, an Irish nationalist colleague of his. She chides Gabriel for writing for an English newspaper and not learning Irish, and, in response, he declares that he is sick of Ireland.
While Gretta is attempting to persuade Gabriel that they should go on a summer trip to the Aran Islands that Molly mentioned, Kate announces that Julia is going to sing "Arrayed for the Bridal", an operatic piece from her "concert days". Despite her warbling voice, Freddy drunkenly gushes over the performance, and Kate complains about the Pope ending her sister's singing career in the church choir when he replaced the women with boys.