Have you seen the movie The Quiet Man, directed by John Ford? It is a wonderfully told story about people, honor, tradition, pride, and love. Every shot is the film is set up like a painting, with fine attention given to composition and structure. The cast is great. The film is beautiful and big-hearted.
But the best thing about this movie is the performance given by **Maureen O’Hara ** as Mary Kate Daneher. Maureen O’Hara is a **force of nature ** in this movie. Her entry scene is breath-taking. Her range of expression is wonderful. Her physical presence is jaw-dropping and glorious. She conveys enormous meaning with the smallest gesture. Look what she does with her left hand when Sean Thorton meets her outside the church. Look how she parts her lips ever so slightly in the scene when they sit in front of the fire after each having spoken to a member of the clergy about their troubles. Notice the look on her face right after she tells her husband ‘I’ll be going home now,’ just before the big fight between her husband, played by John Wayne, and her brother, played by Victor McLaglen.
And behold the dazzling smile on her face in the last scene of the movie!
Haven’t seen the movie but Maureen O’Hara in recent years impresses the hell out of me. I wish someone would write a screenplay for her to star in as the sexy older woman (equivalent to Sean Connery) with a much younger love interest (I’m thinking Keanu Reeves). She’s strong and powerful and no-nonsense, and she looks damn good!
The Quiet Man was one of my wife’s favorite movies (and mine, too). I would occasionally come home from work and shout, “Woman of the house, where’s my tea!” (To which she usually replied, “Go away with that phony brogue of yours.”)
The Collector’s Edition DVD has a documentary, “The Joy of Ireland” with Maureen O’Hara, as well as a reproduction of a handwritten letter from her.
The letter closes with something in Gaelic which I can’t reproduce here.
I read the short story first. As a nonviolent kid who was often picked on by loudmouth guys who thought shoving other guys around and picking fights and having fights was just the coolest thing about being a guy, I really liked that story, about a quiet fellow with a mysterious American past who pops up in the village in Ireland and is taunted and picked on and shoved upon and belittled by his girlfriend’s (& then, wife’s) brother until it finally goes too damn far and the quiet man decks the bastard with one very quick combo — it turns out his American past involved him being a prizefighter, and Mr Bigmouth pushy-shovy Make Fun of Guys Who Don’t Wanna Fight gets exactly what he deserves and is made to look totally ridiculous in front of his equally stupid jeering friends, and the quiet man goes back to being a quiet man but now no one messes with him.
Stupid movie turned the whole plot around: quiet fellow pops up in a village and is too sissified to fight for what is his, including respect for himself and for his girlfriend / wife until finally it goes too damn far and thus he gets initiated into the Wonderful World of Brotherly Fistfighting and all of Ireland turns out to watch this long long slugfest, it’s so wonderful, they’re punching each other and all, and when it’s over they’re the best of friends and drinking buddies.
Ahunter3 - The differences you mention between the story and the movie have me confused.
In the movie, the Quiet Man character is a prize fighter who won’t fight because he killed a man in the ring, when he was a professional boxer in American known as Trooper Thorton. No one in the village in Ireland knows that except the Church of Ireland vicar. The Quiet Man character was not, as you suggest, too sissified to fight, nor does he need to be initiated into the world of Brotherly Fist fighting.
Anyway, you can burn your copy of the movie, but don’t you harm a hair on Mary Kate Danaher’s head!
I love the movie despite Mary Kate’s being literally dragged on the ground by Thornton. (I have to consider the attitude of the time period during which it was made.) At least Mary Kate was portrayed as being a strong-willed woman determined to have what is rightly hers.
Maureen O’Hara is one of my favorites and this movie is one of her best. I saw her in a television interview a few years ago and she is utterly beautiful still. She and John Wayne were well-matched in the movies they did together.
Another objection to the movie is that it preaches non-violence on one hand and then solves the conflict of the story with a fight.
In this case, I will continue to overcome my objections and watch the movie again around St. Patrick’s Day. It’s worth it.
The movie is set in Innesfree. If you like the movie, you might like the poem "The Lake Isle of Innesfree’ by Yeats:
I’m still not sure why, but I think John Ford is one of the greatest directors who ever pointed a camera. I can rewatch any of his movies, any number of times–except The Quiet Man. The way that Wayne’s character physically abuses O’Hara’s character nearly physically sickens me. It’s one of the few scenes in cinema that I find physically uncomfortable to sit through. It horrifies me like a nightmare that I can’t wake up from. YMMV.
I hope your wife never sees McLintock!, another Wayne-O’Hara teaming (although not directed by John Ford). In this one, he drags poor Maureen through the streets of a western town in her underwear before administering a public spanking. :eek:
McClintock! is a piece of shite, as Groundskeeper Willie would say. A boring, stupid movie. You can compare the Quiet Man and McClintock!, in the same way you can compare a dozen roses and a basket of toads.
Anyway, I love Maureen O’Hara. She may get beat around a bit in her movies, but she always played strong-willed women in them, that give as good as they get.
Waits - Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you were comparing the two movies. It is, though, easy to compare them, since McClintock is a bargain basement rip-off of The Quiet Man. I recently watched McClintock for the first time in years , and I was embarassed for all involved. Including me, for watching it! What were they thinking?
