The cast also features Wendy Hiller, Marie Kean, Ian McNeice, Alan Devlin, Prunella Scales, Sheila Reid, and Aidan Gillen in his first film appearance.

Judith Hearne is a lonely, middle-aged, Irish spinster from a good family in distressed circumstances who gives piano lessons independently but is losing pupils.

After moving into a rooming house in Dublin, she meets and becomes attracted to the landlady's widowed brother, the charming James Madden, who has returned from the United States.

Pauline Kael wrote: "Clayton is a felicitous choice to direct a character study film about a woman's rage against the Church for her wasted life.

His first feature was Room at the Top with Simone Signoret and he made The Innocents with Deborah Kerr and The Pumpkin Eater with Anne Bancroft – he knows how to show women's temperatures and their mind-body inter-actions.