The Quiet Man
Director
John Ford
Writers
Frank S. Nugent, Maurice Walsh, John Ford
Stars
John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Barry Fitzgerald
Plot
Sean Thornton has returned from America to reclaim his homestead and escape his past. Sean's eye is caught by Mary Kate Danaher, a beautiful but poor maiden, and younger sister of ill-tempered "Red" Will Danaher. The riotous relationship that forms between Sean and Mary Kate, punctuated by Will's pugnacious attempts to keep them apart, form the main plot, with Sean's past as the dark undercurrent.
Date
1952
The Quiet Man is a romantic/comedy/drama film released in 1952 by Republic Pictures and directed by John Ford. It starred John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, with Barry Fitzgerald and a host of Irish stage actors and local extras.
The plot revolves around Sean Thornton, a retired boxer, who has returned from America to reclaim his homestead and escape his past. Sean's eye is caught by Mary Kate Danaher, a beautiful but poor maiden, and younger sister of ill-tempered "Red" Will Danaher. The riotous relationship that forms between Sean and Mary Kate, punctuated by Will's pugnacious attempts to keep them apart, form the main plot, with Sean's past as the dark undercurrent.
The film was an official selection of the 1952 Venice Film Festival. The film won two Academy Awards, for Ford for Best Director, (his fourth) and Winton Hoch won for Best Cinematography. It had a further five nominations. In 2013, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
The film was something of a departure for Wayne and Ford, who were both known mostly for Westerns and other action-oriented films. The film features Winton Hoch's lush photography of the Irish countryside in Mayo and Galway and a long, climactic, semi-comic fist fight all filmed in dazzling Technicolour. The region’s picturesque landscapes and traditional villages (such as Cong) provided an ideal backdrop for the film’s plot. It is one of the few Hollywood movies in which the Irish language can be heard.
By all accounts, the shoot was a memorable experience for the entire production team. The actors were amazed by the beauty of the landscape, and had the chance to discover Irish culture through contact with the local population. The cast and crew lived together in local cottages, reinforcing their camaraderie and team spirit. They also faced challenges, including unpredictable Irish weather, which sometimes delayed filming. But John Ford, known as a demanding director, took full advantage of the Irish climate, playing with the light and the Irish landscapes to get the result he wanted.
“The Quiet Man” was often seen as an accurate depiction of rural life in 1950s Ireland. Local traditions, dialects and customs carefully represented, and the film has helped preserve these aspects of Irish culture. And whilst the target market was undoubtedly the huge Irish diaspora back in America the film has become an enduring classic around the globe.
As soon as it was released, “The Quiet Man” had a significant impact on tourism in Ireland. The magnificent landscapes and picturesque villages featured in the film have attracted visitors from all over the world. The Irish tourism industry was quick to recognize the importance of the film, and began promoting the filming locations to its visitors. Still, today, many tours in Ireland include visits to the filming locations of “The Quiet Man”, and fans of the film continue to flock to the area to experience the film. A museum dedicated to the film was opened in the village of Cong, which was the location of the fictional Inishfree of the film.
Ford chose his friend, Hollywood composer Victor Young, to compose the score for the film. Young sprinkled the soundtrack with many Irish airs such as the "Rakes of Mallow" and "The Wild Colonial Boy". One piece of music, chosen by Ford himself, is most prominent: the melody the "Isle of Innisfree", written not by Young, but by the Irish policeman/songwriter Richard Farrelly. The melody of the "Isle of Innisfree", which is first heard over the opening credit sequence with Ashford Castle in the background, becomes the principal musical theme of The Quiet Man. The melody is reprised at least eleven times throughout the film.
The film was also a financial success, grossing $3.8 million in its first year of release. This was among the top ten grosses of the year. It was also the seventh most popular film for British audiences in 1952. The film has been aired continuously on television since.
Modern audiences’ interpretations of the film, are influenced by welcomed scrutiny of the Golden Age of Hollywood along with an awareness of Irish stereotypes still prevalent in American culture and racist and homophobic views expressed by deceased co-leading actor John Wayne during his lifetime.
Popular Culture
Steven Spielberg considers Ford an influence as well: “I try to rent a John Ford film … before I start every movie, simply because he inspires me … He’s like a classic painter: he celebrates the frame, not just what’s inside it.”
Spielberg offered his most direct Ford homage in his 1982 blockbuster "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" which features E.T. watching "The Quiet Man" and Elliott reenacting a scene from the film.
Maureen O’Hara
Born Maureen FitzSimons, on August 17, 1920, in Ranelagh, Ireland. The second oldest of six children, Maureen was raised in a close-knit Irish Catholic family. Her father, Charles, was a businessman, and her mother, Marguerite, was an accomplished stage actress and opera singer. Maureen displayed a penchant for dramatics at an early age when she staged presentations for her family; in school she was active in singing and dancing.
While still in her early teens, Maureen enrolled at Dublin's prestigious Abbey Theatre School, where she studied drama and music. Upon her graduation in 1937, she was offered a lead role with the Abbey Players, but instead she decided to try her hand at film acting. She then moved to London, where an impressive audition caught the attention of Oscar-winning movie star and producer Charles Laughton. After convincing Maureen to change her surname to O'Hara, Laughton helped launch Maureen's career by recommending her for the role of the orphaned Mary Yelland in Alfred Hitchcock's British-made film Jamaica Inn (1939). Although the film met with lacklustre reviews, O'Hara was noted for her convincing performance.
Under the tutelage of Laughton, O'Hara signed a contract with RKO Studios in 1939. She moved to Hollywood in the summer of that year, making her American film debut as the alluring gypsy Esmeralda (opposite Laughton's Quasimodo) in RKO's lavish production The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
In 1941, O'Hara gave a haunting performance as the Welsh daughter of a mining family in the drama How Green Was My Valley, which marked her first collaboration with legendary director John Ford. The film triumphed at the Oscars, winning top honours in five categories, including Best Picture and Best Director.
While fulfilling contract commitments with both RKO Studios and 20th Century-Fox, O'Hara was billed alongside Hollywood's leading men in a slew of swashbuckling features. Among the most notable were 1942's The Black Swan (with Tyrone Power), 1947's Sinbad the Sailor (with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), and 1949's Bagdad (with Vincent Price). In between action films, O'Hara was assigned a role in the 1947 holiday classic Miracle on 34th Street.
During the 1940s and 1950s, O'Hara was repeatedly cast as the heroine in elaborate Technicolor features. Her strong-willed characters, which were complimented by her fiery red hair, green eyes, and peaches and cream complexion, earned her the nickname "Queen of Technicolor."
In 1950, O'Hara entered a new phase of her career when she was cast as John Wayne's estranged wife in John Ford's romantic Western Rio Grande. O'Hara shared great screen chemistry with Wayne and served as his leading lady in a succession of films over the next few years, culminating in The Quiet Man.
In the early 1960s, O'Hara shifted her career focus. She showcased her attractive singing voice in a series of television appearances, record albums, and the Broadway musical Christine (1960). A number of lighter roles in family comedies followed, including the 1961 Hayley Mills vehicle The Parent Trap. O'Hara reunited with long-time friend and costar John Wayne in the comedies McLintock! and Big Jake. Shortly after, O'Hara retired to St. Croix, Virgin Islands.
John Ford
John Martin Feeney (February 1, 1894 – August 31, 1973), known professionally as John Ford, was an American film director and producer. He is regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers during the Golden Age of Hollywood, and was one of the first American directors to be recognized as an auteur. In a career of more than 50 years, he directed over 140 films between 1917 and 1965 (although most of his silent films are now lost), and received six Academy Awards including a record four wins for Best Director for The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and The Quiet Man (1952).
Born in Maine in 1894 as John Martin Feeney, Ford was one of eleven children born to post-famine Irish immigrants who both hailed from Co Galway– father from Spiddal, mother from the Aran Islands – and he loved to return, first on exploratory visits and then to make films. Ford's future directorial career would be heavily influenced by being the son of Irish immigrants.
In 1914, when silent films began to transition to Technicolor, Ford followed his brother to Hollywood.
On one level, "The Quiet Man" is Ford’s valentine to Ireland. As Martin Scorsese noted, every child of immigrants has very deep feelings towards the old country.
Other than "The Quiet Man," Ford is best known for his western classics like "Stagecoach," "The Searchers," and "Grapes of Wrath," but his heart was firmly in Ireland and the homeplace of his family. Ford himself had passionately defended immigrants who were suspected of being communists against Cecil B. De Mille and others who wanted foreign directors banned. Ford took it upon himself to defend them in a heated exchange at the Director’s Guild in 1950.
He had close relatives who fought for the IRA. During the Irish War of Independence in 1921, Ford travelled to his ancestral homeland of County Galway to give financial and moral support to cousins fighting for the Irish Republican Army against the Black and Tans. Ford's visit lasted only a few days, ending when the British roughed him up and ordered him to leave the country. But Ford never forgot his time there. His first classic 'The Informer' in 1935 looked deep into the soul of Ireland's most hated figure - an informer.
The name on the credits is John Ford, but he had many names, formal and informal, to mark his shifting identities. He began his career as Jack Ford; to his co-workers he was ‘Pappy’ or ‘Coach’; but as Maureen O’Hara recalled, “Pappy always loved calling himself by the Gaelic version of his birth name, Sean Aloysius Kilmartin O’Feeney.” Many other Hollywood directors had Irish roots but none took them with as deep a seriousness as he did, or made as much of them in life or in filmmaking.
Ford’s films set in Ireland were, firstly the silent movies The Shamrock Handicap (1926), and Hangman’s House (1928), followed by The Informer (1935), The Plough and the Stars (1936) and finally The Quiet Man (1952).
