Director John Ford made the Western genre of film popular within Irish cinema.  His movie The Quiet Man, shot on location in Ireland meets all the categories that are recognizable in an American western.  The film stars John Wayne, known for his roles in westerns and was written by Frank Nugent, who is no stranger to westerns, writing screenplays for films such as Fort Apache.  I would have classified this film as a romantic comedy but The Quiet Man has all the makings of a western.  For example, the plot of a western is boy meets girl, obstacles are placed in their path which they overcome and they live happily ever after.  Such is the case in The Quiet Man, as the main character Sean Thornton (John Wayne) returns to Ireland, back to the village of Inisfree to the cottage he was born in.  Instead of a gunslinger, Thornton is a retired boxer from America.  He encounters the beautiful red headed Mary Kate Danaher (Maureen O’Hara) and they fall in love and the obstacle standing in their way is her brother ‘Red’ Danaher (Victor McLaglen).   Red refuses to allow Mary Kate to marry Thornton and refuses to provide her with a dowry.  The local priest and some of the locals conspire to trick Red into letting his sister marry and to provide her a large sum of money for her dowry.

The cinematography is similar to that of an American western which features scenes shot outdoors with vast blue skies and wild rainy landscapes.  One requirement of Western films is the need to colonialize or civilize the West and in this film we see the need for Thornton to civilize Mary Kate and her village. Thornton cannot understand the importance of their customs and what the dowry means to Mary Kate.  She feels the tradition of bringing her belongings into their marriage validates her as a proud married woman.

Interestingly John Ford intended for this film to be more political with an IRA plot but the company, Republic Studios wanted more of a feel good movie. Although there are some political subtleties mentioned in the movie, such as the scene when Father Lonergan meets Thornton and makes a reference to the fact that he knew his grandfather who died in a penal colony in Australia.  Ford does paint a very positive portrait of Ireland in this film; a quaint rural village where a Catholic priest and a Protestant minister are friends.  He also creates the role of Mary Kate as a very strong willed independent woman, which was hard within the confines of rural Irish Catholic society.

One reason to watch this film, it has one of the all time greatest fistfight.  It goes on so long they stop in the pub for a drink!  This film may not have the classic American western look to it but it does have the components that make it a western regardless of where it was shot. 

I am not a fan of John Wayne and I really didn't like the scene where he drags Mary Kate across the fields.   I feel it was a stereotypical macho image that John Wayne seems to always gravitate to in his acting.  

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Produced and directed by Peter Foott, this 2016 Irish comedy is based on a true story of two teenage boys who go off in search of a capsized boat containing 61 bales of cocaine. Each bale is worth seven million euros.  Best friends Jock and Conor are two inner city teenagers, both products of single-parent family homes in Cork. They both think they are mature individuals despite the fact that they have the same haircuts, they dress the same and act the same.  Their dissimilarities are their own set of problems, an abusive alcoholic father is raising Jock and a hard working single mom is raising Conor.  Jock is the troublemaker, stealing bikes and provoking the local policeman, Sargent Healy.

Upon hearing the news of missing bales of cocaine, Jock and Conor steal bikes and head off to the west of Ireland to search the coastline for missing bales.  For two inner city boys, finding a bale worth 7 million euros will change their lives.  Unfortunately one of the bikes they steal has a GPS tracker and Sargent Healy is in hot pursuit of the two boys. 

When they reach the coast, the boys realize that quite a few people have also combed the beaches looking for cocaine bales.  Fortunately for them they stumble upon a disabled drug dealer and manage to steal his bale of cocaine, but unfortunately the cocaine is lost.  The dealer tracks them down, Sargent Healy gets involved and the boys come clean to Conor’s mum as they are all being held hostage at nail-gun point. 

The title of the film suggests that if the boys are caught in possession of a cocaine bale, they can’t do jail time due to the fact that they are young offenders.  Best line in the movie, "for some reason they thought our brains weren't developed enough for us to know what we were doing or something, stupid eh?"  This law also spurs Jock on to stealing bikes, as he knows he won’t go to jail if caught.   This film won Best Irish Feature Film at the Galway Film Fleadh in 2016.   A great film, a great laugh.  My favourite part is when Jock and Conor plan to jump a wharf into the sea and the chicken scene.  Enjoy this film!

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Trailer:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpCuiCTpLnc

This classic black and white psychological thriller leads the audience through the dark rainy streets of Belfast,1946.  Carol Reed’s film, Odd Man Out, based on a novel by F.L. Green, is deeply rooted in the film noir style.  This film rejects the back lot movie settings of Hollywood and moves into the actual city streets, back alleys and tenement buildings.  Shooting in the typical black and white of the film noir style, the city landscapes allowed for the use of shadows and darkness. Darkness creates a sense of fear and suspense, which the audience cannot escape from through out this film.  The first dark scene in Odd Man Out finds the main protagonist Johnny, shot and bleeding in an old air raid shelter in a back alley of a tenement building. The darkness is used as part of the scene, a young couple enters, unaware they are being watched.  Only a shaft of light from an illuminated match lights their faces, the effect emphasizing panic and apprehension.

The use of camera motion allows the audience to not only see but also feel the scene.  In order to create a feeling of dizziness or delirium, Reed moves the camera in circles so that the audience can feel disorientated.  This is used in two scenes in the movie, as Johnny emerges from the robbery and becomes dizzy from the bright sunlight and again in the artist’s loft where he is delusional from his gunshot wound.  Throughout the movie, Reed’s cinematographer Robert Krasker draws us into the story of Johnny’s dilemma by his use of lighting, camera angles and vanishing points, into the black rain filled night, which is typical of film noir movies.

In the beginning of the film, Johnny our anti-hero believes that violence isn’t helping their cause and that guns are not the answer but during a payroll heist he becomes dazed and accidentally kills a guard.  Now turned murderer he is a man on the run.  Guilt stemming from the knowledge of killing a man leads our anti-hero into flashback and dream sequences that reveal repressive thoughts that are synonymous with film noir.  Johnny encounters a few flashbacks, one in the air raid shelter where he mistakes a young girl as a prison guard, another in the pub where he sees the faces of friends in spilt beer bubbles and again in the loft of the estranged artist. 

Our female role, Kathleen is not the typical femme fatale and even though she is in love with Johnny, she confides in Father Tom that she will take Johnny’s life to save him from the gallows and she will go with him.  True to the film noir guidelines, Johnny is doomed by events beyond his control and the true tragedy of the film is that Johnny and Kathleen never find love.

Film noir was meant to reflect the true state of American society, the corruption and morality of the 1940s.  Odd Man Out, an Irish film, mirrors the reality of what was happening in Northern Ireland in the mid 1940s.

Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out which makes it a classic masterpiece of film noir, worthy of it’s British Film Academy award for the Best British Motion Picture of 1947.

If you like Sam Spade style movies, you'll like this one.  Starring a young James Mason.

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This film was written and directed by Robert Flaherty in 1934 and portrays the daily life of a family living on the Aran Islands off the West coast of Ireland near County Galway. This black and white film features a family (husband, wife and son) performing their tedious tasks in order to carve out a life on the barren rocky island.  This pseudo documentary represents more like an historical re-enactment within the genre of ethnographic cinema rather than a true representation of life on the island. Where this film falls short was it’s authenticity, with Flaherty taking liberties in truthful descriptions of their way of life.  In Man of Aran Flaherty tries to draw us into practice of the ‘noble savage’ and asks us to believe that this ancient way of life has yet to be tainted by western civilization.  

In order to show how the men of Aran battle with nature, Flaherty directs a shark hunt which has actually not been practised on the island for generations.  According to Hugh Gray, ‘the inhabitants had to be taught shark-hunting in order to supply Mr. Flaherty with a dramatic sequence.’ [1]  A similar hunting scene was filmed in his earlier movie, Nanook of the North in 1922 that pushed the boundaries of authenticity as well.  Flaherty tells the story of the Inuit’s survival in the harsh conditions of Canada’s Hudson Bay area.  In this film he re-enacted a walrus hunt in which the Inuit no longer practised.  In both scenes, the hunters are confronted with the elements of nature as a storm appears.  Both are long drawn out sequences, giving the audience a sense of real time and urgency. 

I felt he portrayed the Irish on the island as pure, untouched and hard working yet he presented them as too primitive and left me with a sense of ‘there’s got to be a better way.’   A good example of this was the scene where the family scavenges crevices in the windswept rocks looking for small handfuls of soil for their garden.  

Although there is an attempt to show us how hard life on the island can be, I wished that he had included the village life and some social and cultural behaviours. Flaherty does give the audience a good sense of the baroness and the harshness of the island through spectacular cinematography.   There are amazing shots of large waves thundering against the cliffs and dangerous turbulent waters below.  Putting all scripting aside, this film lets you imagine and feel what it was like to struggle everyday for survival while instilling in us a respect for Mother Nature.  Robert Flaherty catered to our expectations of the human struggle to survive but not to the reality.

The Colleen Bawn (1911)

The third silent era film by the Kalem Company was based on a 1860s play of the same name, a romantic drama of a secret marriage that leads to murder.  The film location was in County Kerry, Ireland and was directed by Sidney Olcott, also starring Gene Gauntier (as the Colleen Bawn). The story is based on the actual murder of a 15 year old girl named Ellen Scanlan in 1819.  I would recommend reading the play or a summary of the story before watching this film as it can be quite confusing.  I was impressed with the vision of the director, the cinematographer and the actors, all exploring and experimenting with a relatively new medium.  The technological determination of primitive cinema needs to be applauded as this was the stepping stones of the present day cinema.  

The Kalem Company was very concerned in authenticity and in the credits they mention the bed in the film was actually used by Daniel O'Connell, the Great Emancipator of Ireland.  During the viewing of the film they played old political ballads and invited guest lecturers to speak afterwards.  Irish soil was brought over from Ireland and placed at the threshold of the theatre so that patrons could actually 'step on' Irish ground as they entered the building to watch the film.  

Kalem and Sidney Olcott parted ways after a difference of artistic opinion on a film called "From Manger to Cross."  Gene Gauntier left with Olcott and went on to perform in over eighty films and write over forty screenplays.

1927 ushered in the era of the 'talkies' and within a decade silent films were forever silenced. 

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Three reels long, approximately 41 minutes.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwR94ukHDdQ

Rory O'More (1911)

The second film of the silent era by the Kalem Company was also filmed in Ireland and directed by Sidney Olcott.  This film was adapted from an Anglo-Irish novel by Samuel Lover and the leading roles were performed by Gene Gauntier (as Kathleen) and Jack Clark (as Rory). The film was based on the Irish rebellions of 1798.  The film is political in nature and Olcott seizes the opportunity to voice his nationalist opinion in which the British government takes offence and bans the film.  

The storyline:  Rory O'More is in hiding because there is a price on his head.  His sweetheart Kathleen meets him in secret but they are discovered causing Rory to flee from the English soldiers.  He rescues a drowning soldier but Black William demands his arrest.  While in prison awaiting trial, Rory's famous subtitle reads " If to fight for Ireland be a crime, then I am guilty."  Spoiler alert!  Rory is sentenced to hang but at the gallows he is saved by his priest who knocks out the executioner and Rory escapes on a horse.  The final scene of the movie is missing but he meets Kathleen and they take a boat to America.  

Movie is 2 reels long, approximately 11 minutes. Great cinematography. 

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The movie can be found on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ0_Q1OJ518

The Kalem Company

In 1905 advancements in cameras and lighting techniques allowed shooting of film to move from the outdoor biograph rooftop studios into the indoor studios.  By 1909 there were 9000 cinemas in the United States, with Universal being the first movie studio.  The period of 1909-1917 was considered "Primitive Cinema" and in 1910, George Kleine, Samuel Long and Frank Marion founded the Kalem Film Company,  also known as O'Kalem's in New York City.  Shooting their first film in Ireland, The Lad from Old Ireland, made cinematic history as the first American production company to shoot outside of the United States.

The Lad from Old Ireland  (1910)

Sidney Olcott who stars in the film (as Terry O'Connor) also directed this production, while his leading lady Gene Gauntier (as Aileene) wrote the screenplay.  The company traveled to southwest Ireland which is a very rural and traditional Catholic area of the country.   At the time of filming,  Ireland was politically involved in fighting for Home Rule, seeking independence from Britain.  

The plot of the story: the main character Terry O'Connor dreams of a better life and emigrates to America to escape the destitution of Ireland.  Arriving in New York City Terry finds work in construction and eventually becomes a successful politician.  Meanwhile back in Ireland his sweetheart Aileen and her family are being evicted from their land.  Terry returns to Ireland and marries Aileen, freeing her from poverty.  Although this film was shot in Ireland it was intended for an American audience, for the Irish diaspora to feel for home.  The movie was a huge success in America.

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12 minutes long.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPs8vbcVXMc&t=13s&index=1&list=PLFZzNFMpmBnP40pk4iC5Z3Mi56_4q_vsJ