Reeling in the years: A look back at the early days of the Cork Film Festival

John Daly looks back at the halcyon days of the Cork Film Festival in the 1950s and ’60s when the Rebel City became a Technicolor wonderland of enchantment and exoticism.

THERE was a time in Ireland when the word ‘glamour’ really measured up to its definition — and nowhere was it more stunningly displayed than at the Cork Film Festival during its heyday in the 1950s and ’60s.

Picture the organised chaos of Patrick Street back then, with ten thousand spectators swelling the pavements in a sea of flatcaps and headscarves, hundreds of gardaí forming human barriers and hordes of photographers poised to snap — all waiting hours for a glimpse of the stars as they alighted from luxury limousines to an explosion of flashbulbs on the red carpet.