Happy Ever After – 1954 | 84 mins | Comedy | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Happy Ever After is an achingly funny comedy, full of hilarious incident. In the Irish village of Rathbarney, the aged squire is killed while hunting. His successor, O’Leary (David Niven), arrives in Rathbarney to take over his dead great uncle’s estate. O’Leary disembarks the train in the pin-striped suit and bowler hat of a bureaucrat, but it is his attempts to exploit the estate in the manner of modern business that upsets the locals. He plans changes, what he calls ‘reconstruction’ or squeezing ‘the lemon dry’. He does so by relying on formal agreements rather than tradition or personal arrangements. He insists on collecting the rent on the cottage of his ancient bailiff by calculating ten years of arrears and giving him a week to pay; he seeks to charge interest on debts the estate is owed but refuses to pay his predecessor’s gambling debts because they were not put in writing; he refuses to honour the dying wishes of his great uncle because they were only ‘deathbed ramblings’.

When the community converges on the village hall with the intention of getting rid of O’Leary under cover of the traditional ‘O’Leary Night’, when the ancestral ghost is meant to appear. The rival poachers unite in an attempt to ambush O’Leary in the woods, while two different groups of villagers wander through the grounds and invade the house. Unknown to each other, both the major and Thaddy, the manservant, dress up as ghosts to frighten O’Leary. Finally, the new squire is discovered trying to burn his manor down for the insurance money, the whole village arrives to put out the fire. The local priest and lawyer make up an official delegation to announce the discovery of a new will which does, in the end, lead to O’Leary’s expulsion. As Father Cormack tells O’Leary, ‘In an emergency, the whole village acts as one man.’