Sam Hanna Bell's debut novel (1951), about life in a tight-knit Presbyterian community in turn-of-the-century Northern Ireland, was adapted for the screen by David Rudkin and directed by Thaddeus O'Sullivan in 1990. Both as a novel and as a film, December Bride is a remarkable combination of passion and politics set against a rural backdrop of communal constraint and individual action. Visually and thematically, the film is a timely reinvestigation...