The Irish in Us
Ireland, of course, has never posed a military threat to the United States, and although immigration was a concern during the nineteenth century, it had dissipated by the time film became an important medium. Thus American films have been largely sympathetic in their depiction of Irish immigration and Irish Americans. Films such as Boys Town (1938), Going My Way (1944), Sweet Rosie O'Grady (1943), The Irish in Us (1935), and Abie's Irish Rose (1946) depicted the Irish as a rather quaint people sometimes overly prone to self-deception but also kindhearted, decent, and likable. The gift of blarney — which in other ethnic groups we might simply call persuasiveness — is amply displayed, and if the characters sometimes appear a little too easygoing, like Bing Crosby's Father O'Malley in Going My Way, their idealism and basic honesty see them through. Prewar American films tended to stay away from Irish history, and when they did cover it, as in MGM's Parnell (1937), starring Clark Gable as the famed Irish politician, it was usually in a glossy style that emphasized romantic relationships over political sophistication.
Of course, the fact that the powerful Catholic Legion of Decency could destroy a film's commercial chances by declaring it unfit for viewing by Catholics may have had a positive influence on prewar American movies' depiction of the Irish. Even so, the irrepressibly satirical Preston Sturges ignored the risks and created a classic treatment of American urban politics, prewar style, in The Great McGinty (1940). In Sturges's film, the title character, a crabby, selfish Irish-American played brilliantly by Brian Donleavy, rises from thug to political hack to governor thanks to the thorough corruption of his city's and state's political machines. It is a classic satire of American politics and an unusually honest look at its ethnic roots.
During World War II, Hollywood aimed to pull the nation together for the war effort, and a couple of fine films told true stories highlighting special contributions that Irish Americans had made to American life. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1944) features Jimmy Cagney in a brilliant performance as playwright and songwriter George M. Cohan, whose patriotism and love of America revealed this Irish American to be a model citizen. The Fighting Sullivans (1944) told the story of five brothers who make the ultimate sacrifice for their country: After growing up together in Iowa during the Depression, they are all killed in a single battle in the Pacific during World War II.
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A Magical, Mystical Land
The war was a transitional point for American films, as the movies began to explore more ambitious subject matter, and the treatment of the Irish changed accordingly. Filmmakers pushed their material to the extremes, and Ireland and the Irish were often depicted as either exceedingly quaint or appallingly dreary. The quaint style would evolve from the rather charming Top o' the Morning (1949), starring Bing Crosby as a singing insurance investigator (and why not?) who travels to the Emerald Isle to investigate the theft of the Blarney Stone, to the somewhat treacly Francis Ford Coppola musical Finian's Rainbow (1968), starring Fred Astaire.
Films that depict a dreary, poverty-stricken Ireland and grimy Irish-American life include The Molly Maguires (1970), in which Sean Connery and Richard Harris play nineteenth-century Pennsylvania miners involved in a secret organization that fights a heartless mining company with sabotage and murder. Irish-American mobsters are as nasty as any others in Goodfellas (1990) and Miller's Crossing (1992), and Ireland itself is a mighty poor and shabby place in My Left Foot (1989), The Playboys (1992), The Crying Game (1992), The Commitments (1991), and the exceptionally depressing Angela's Ashes (1999). Although Americans often think of the Emerald Isle as a magical, mystical land, the Irish have had little luck with movies about the supernatural. In Neil Jordan's awful comedy High Spirits (1988), Peter O'Toole plays the owner of a decrepit hotel who fakes hauntings to attract guests interested in the castle's ghosts. It turns out that there really are ghosts there (played by Liam Neeson and Darryl Hannah), and they are extremely unfunny and oversexed, as is the film itself. In Leprechaun (1993) and its sequels, the eponymous creature comes to America and wreaks havoc in search of its stolen pot of gold.
John Huston's The Dead (1987) is a somber film but transcendentally so. It was Huston's final film, and its theme of love lost and regret for roads not taken is presented in an appropriately understated, elegiac manner that does justice to its source, the brilliant story by James Joyce. Da (1988), starring Martin Sheen as a New York playwright who goes to Ireland to bury his father and reconcile himself with his past, manages to be both funny and touching. Far and Away (1992), directed by Ron Howard, tells the story of an Irish immigrant couple (Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman) who leave behind grinding poverty in Ireland for a grueling life of toil in Boston, never giving up on their dream of owning land. This being America, they get a chance to achieve their goal when they join the Oklahoma Land Rush, and Cruise and Kidman give the best performances of their lives. Waking Ned Devine (1998) is a charming comedy in which two elderly residents of an Irish coastal village conspire to collect on the lottery ticket of a friend who died of shock upon learning of his win. The villagers find out about it and decide to pretend that Ned is still alive; the infighting and conspiracies are hilarious, and the depiction of small-town life is accurate. John Sayles's The Secret of Roan Inish (1994) tells the tale of a ten-year-old girl sent to live with her grandparents in Donegal, Ireland, where she finds tantalizing evidence of the existence of selkies (seals that can transform into human beings) and of her brother who disappeared years earlier when his cradle washed into the sea. Sayles's quiet, sensitive direction makes her search for love in a lonely place touching.
An Ireland to Cherish
Far less charming have been the numerous films about “the troubles” — the struggle for Irish independence and unification. John Ford's The Informer (1935) is a brilliant early examination of the subject, with a splendid performance by Victor MacLaglen as the conscience-torn title character. This film set the tone for nearly every such treatment since, establishing the theme of betrayal as the common thread of all films about the subject. The theme is central to Odd Man Out (1947), Ryan's Daughter (1970), Michael Collins (1996), and The Devil's Own (1997), all of which are very good and interesting films. Michael Collins is notable for its use of settings and action to make the English occupying army resemble Nazis, and Ryan's Daughter, directed by the great David Lean (though not one of his best films), is interesting for its use of parallel betrayals, political and adulterous, to add emotional depth to its story of life in a remote Irish village during World War I. Robert Mitchum's performance, as a schoolteacher whose wife cuckolds him with an English soldier, is one of the most stunning and uncompromising film portrayals ever of how a Christian — or anybody else — should behave under difficult circumstances. The Devil's Own, directed by Alan J. Pakula, is notable for excellent performances by Harrison Ford as a New York City cop and Brad Pitt as an undercover IRA terrorist, as well as for the following line spoken by Pitt: “Don't look for happy endings, Tom. It's not an American story. It's an Irish one.”
Such abject pessimism has certainly been a major factor in films about Ireland and the Irish for the past half-century, but the greatest of all films about the Irish people has a very happy ending indeed. The Quiet Man, directed by John Ford, was definitely a labor of love for the Irish-born director and is one of his finest films. John Wayne plays Sean Thornton, an American professional boxer who moves to rural Ireland to reclaim his ancestral homestead. Upon arriving, he falls in love with the beautiful but headstrong Mary Kate Danaher (Maureen O'Hara), whose brother Will (Victor MacLaglen) refuses to let him marry her by withholding her dowry.
Sean, as an American, thinks that he and Mary Kate should go right ahead and marry anyway (he doesn't need the money), but his prospective bride is appalled at the thought. It's her money, and she's going to have it. O'Hara is a great match for Wayne, a woman one can easily imagine standing up to him, which adds to the romantic charge of their relationship. The townspeople also take turns meddling in the matter as the lead couple fight over which one should bend, gamely trying to reconcile their respect for tradition and their need for each other. It all leads to one of the best fight scenes ever filmed, as Wayne and MacLaglen range over the beautifully photographed Irish countryside in a marathon fistfight interspersed with comic dialogue, rest periods for beer in the local tavern, and ironic commentary by the villagers, who enjoy the show immensely. As do we. It is one of the greatest comedies ever made, and Ford imbues it with the look and feel of an Ireland that we would all like to cherish.
