The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd writes this Sunday that she thought that the impact of the John Ford movie ’The Quiet Man’ had long since disappeared.
However, she says she found the opposite when she did the 'Quiet Man' tour during a visit to Mayo last week.
Ford made the iconic images we all carry in our heads about Ireland and America, Dowd points out.
“Standing on the little bridge where John Wayne’s Sean Thornton hears his late mother’s voice, it occurred to me that Ford created the most potent cinematic images of two countries, Ireland and America,indelibly shaping our dreams.”
“I thought that by now 'The Quiet Man,' once considered a font of offensive drinking-and-brawling stereotypes by many native Irish, including my Dad, would have disappeared into the mist.”
However, she wrote that “Cong, the stand-in for the fictional Inisfree of the movie, is still such a tourist magnet that the Irish had to designate a decoy 'Quiet Man' cottage because fans seeking keepsakes were dismantling the original chunk by chunk.”
She notes that “It has been 60 years since Ford arrived in Cong in County Mayo, spurring the installation of electricity and phone lines, to shoot his sexy culture clash and love letter to Ireland,” but that the interest shows no sign of flagging.
Among those quoted by Dowd on the impact of John Ford, born Sean Feeney of Connemara parents, was Joseph McBride, film critic and and the author of the definitive “Searching for John Ford."
Dowd notes that McBride hails Ford as “our national mythmaker, our Shakespeare, a man obsessed by his Irish roots.
McBride notes notes that in searing works like “How Green Was My Valley” and “Grapes of Wrath,’’ the director was deeply influenced by his parents’ exile from Ireland.
“He was always dwelling on the break up and collapse of family, community and traditional American ideals,’’ McBride said, “which makes him interesting and modern in a sense.””
Dowd states that Ford juxtaposed the land of his parents and his new country in all his movies pointing out that “He was the Old Master of diametrically different landscapes, lush in the love story shot in Mayo and dusty in the Westerns shot in Monument Valley.”
“It’s so ironic that his people left Ireland because they couldn’t survive in the arid land during the famine,’’ said Joseph McBride. “But then Ford portrayed the American Dream as this prehistoric desert and he portrayed the old country as green and fertile.’’
Ford’s Irish roots often caused others to dislike him Dowd points out.
“Reviewing “Fort Apache" for The Nation in 1948, James Agee viciously wrote: “There is enough Irish comedy to make me wish Cromwell had done a more thorough job."
But Ford’s characters – and the land was always a character – are vivid archetypes.
How little Hollywood understood about Ford’s vision of Ireland was shown Dowd says that when John Ford was making “The Quiet Man" on location in the west of Ireland, the studio head in Hollywood looked at the extravagantly gorgeous footage – which would go on to win the 1952 Oscar for color cinematography -- and complained “Everything’s all green.”
Dowd also points out that “The Quiet Man” almost did not get made.
“It had taken Ford, one of the world’s greatest filmmakers, 20 years to persuade anyone to bankroll the 'silly little Irish story,' as its star Maureen O’Hara drily noted. And even then the director had to
soft pedal the I.R.A. politics that informed the 1933 Maurice Walsh short story the movie was based on, and fight to use Technicolor, the better to illuminate his Arden of green hills, blue sea and red hair.”
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.ciaradexy | Jul 09, 2012, 08:07 AM EDT
The Quiet Man is a disgusting film and now idiots visit Ireland and assume this is what we are like. Pathetic. We are no more like the characters in that film than Americans are like the characters in Mad Max or Law and Order.
IrelandNorth | Jul 09, 2012, 06:48 AM EDT
Quiet men tend to be given to volatile outbursts, even non-Irish ones. Just think of more contemporary alpha male stereotypes pedalled by patriarchy in its relentless self-abusive and abuse of others gender stereotyping of future impressionable adolescent males. Clint Eastwood with is cigar-chewing/denture-grinding "go ahead punk! - make my day!" anger mismanagement, (due to his controlling mother prhaps?) Or Arnold Swartschanegger's granite-jawed "hasta la vista" unt relentless terminating of adversaries (perhaps influenced by his 3rd Reichian dad?) Yet I wonder if the pendulum hasn't swung to the other extreme in contemporary Ireland with hastily imposed multi-culturalism and homosexually licentiousness neo-liberalism of the Church of Political Correctness which replaced the decline and fall of the [Holy?] Roman Empire here. PS Hope Maureen2 reclaims the 'O' prefix her Dad dropped to enhance his job prospects in WASPish America. Not least now that she's an influential New York Times columnist. Go for it Maureen [a dó]. If the president can do, so can you.
IrelandNorth | Jul 09, 2012, 06:47 AM EDT
Quiet men tend to be given to volatile outbursts, even non-Irish ones. Just think of more contemporary alpha male stereotypes pedalled by patriarchy in its relentless self-abusive and abuse of others gender stereotyping of future impressionable adolescent males. Clint Eastwood with is cigar-chewing/denture-grinding "go ahead punk! - make my day!" anger mismanagement, (due to his controlling mother prhaps?) Or Arnold Swartschanegger's granite-jawed "hasta la vista" unt relentless terminating of adversaries (perhaps influenced by his 3rd Reichian dad?) Yet I wonder if the pendulum hasn't swung to the other extreme in contemporary Ireland with hastily imposed multi-culturalism and homosexually licentiousness neo-liberalism of the Church of Political Correctness which replaced the decline and fall of the [Holy?] Roman Empire here. PS Hope Maureen2 reclaims the 'O' prefix her Dad dropped to enhance his job prospects in WASPish America. Not least now that she's an influential New York Times columnist. Go for it Maureen [a dó]. If the president can do, so can you.
oaklongan | Jul 08, 2012, 05:48 PM EDT
McClintock? was a Western film in which in-character John Wayne dragged his recalcitrant wife? played by Maureen O'Hara through the town and spanked her to the cheers of townspeople. Even so, it's not fantasy that town priest cheered-on John Wayne slugging it a scene from "The Quiet Man"; that's gone on in the U.S. too, though not with Jack Dempsey ! Like another skilled fighter, Chuck Norris, both Dempsey parents with Irish and Cherokee (Indian). My friend Tamara is, likewise!
Searlit | Jul 08, 2012, 01:43 PM EDT
That's pretty good GabrlOSullivan. I agree with you. Your take on the Hollywood producer is very funny.
boydshield | Jul 08, 2012, 01:07 PM EDT
Sorry guys. Yanks under 50 never hearing of it. Not true. All those under 50 with ANY Irish is their family could watch it while growing up, on t.v., VCR, and dvd. It gave the now over 50's a beautiful visit to Ireland that mad us want to travel there, as it has done for our children. We didn't see it about drunks, fighting, and the like, we saw it as a love story with beautiful picture of Ireland. You Irish are far too hard on yourselves, and makes me wonder if you've ever seen the movie! And, the new Irish gangster movies? Aren't your countrymen in a lot more than this? Aren't we Yanks smart enough to figure this out? Parts come as parts come, and some times they are few and far between as any actor will tell you. Give it up today and go watch 'The Quiet Man.'
BrianO | Jul 08, 2012, 12:37 PM EDT
The quiet man was a nice old film and fords use of capturing the Irish country side was a good pr piece for Ireland which not too many people had a chance to experience back then. Today its a nice piece of nostalgia to make a euro or two from, much like Moneygall is doing with the fake Irish president's visit, can blame a guy who is trying to make a little money.
GabrlOSullivan | Jul 08, 2012, 11:37 AM EDT
Stiofain -- where credit is due, yes stage Irish and rugbyplayer is right in that no Yank under 50 has probably heard of the Quiet Man. So, all those young tourists that come to Cong, are not coming for the Quiet Man "experience" but for the castle one. Of course, now Hollywood has us stereotyped as film gangsters, so what next I wonder? Love when the writeup is about some Hollywood producer pursuing his "Irish" roots and WE come up short as drunken, red-haired hooligans or murdering leprechauns.
rugbyplayer | Jul 08, 2012, 11:20 AM EDT
"Quiet Man" nostalgia, well, maybe. But I don't think the 1950's stereotypes exist any more at least not in the USA. Most Irish Americans, once known for their loyalty to the Democrat Party have moved over to the GOP (case in point are Fox News anchors like Hannity and O'Reilly and audiences). Jews, too, once known for their Democrat Party loyalty have crossed over to the GOP(Podhoretz,Kristol, Bloomberg, Adelson, Ichan, Perlman, etc.). I loved the "Quiet Man" because I knew where it was filmed and had been to all those beautiful places years ago in Mayo and Galway. But I doubt today that any Yank under 50 has ever watched or even heard of "The Quiet Man." The new Americans are no longer European descendants but Hispanic and Caribbean.
Stiofain | Jul 08, 2012, 11:17 AM EDT
"...in the arid land", "...this prehistoric desert." ? GabrlOSullivan: Correct. A film about stage Irish.
GabrlOSullivan | Jul 08, 2012, 10:55 AM EDT
Maybe in Ford's time the treatment of women by men like Wayne's character was the norm, but today dragging and kicking a feisty woman through a field with the whole town helping out, is nothing more than abusive. I don't think tourists come for the Quiet Man experience, they come to see Ashford Castle and Cong Abbey. The Quiet Man set or what's left of it, is nothing more than a burp.