Two Views of Ireland

Director John Ford came up with two representations of the Irish in film, and they show both ends of the spectrum between the violent circle of vengeance that has plagued that culture for hundreds of years, and the sentimental portrait of a witty caricature. “The Informer” (1935) and “The Quiet Man” (1952) give us not necessarily opposing views of Ireland, both show repressive aspects to their society, but between them give a fuller picture so much so that they should probably be shown together.

Both are excellent films, and despite being the products of Hollywood, because both are directed by a man whose family came from Ireland, who spoke Irish Gaelic himself, they carry an authenticity that most Hollywood films do not have when depicting a foreign land. “The Informer” is gritty, stark, and reflective of the German expressionist school of film. Victor McLaglen, who won the Academy Award for his performance, is a bumbling, flawed, irascible man, a man of little intelligence, whose betrayal to the police of a friend turns him into a haunted, and hunted, man. He turned in the fellow for the reward money, to finance immigration for himself and his prostitute girlfriend to America. He squanders the money instead, his guilt chasing him through the foggy night. In the end, confessing his crime to the betrayed man’s mother, played by Una O’Connor, the IRA catches up with McLaglen and shoots him like a dog. His arms held out in rapture for being forgiven by the Madonna-like sorrowing O’Connor, this lowly, lying, desperate ape of a man becomes Christ-like, and dies for his own sins.

Mr. McLaglen returns in “The Quiet Man” as a boasting, selfish, brawler, the bossy brother of Maureen O’Hara, without whose permission she cannot marry John Wayne. McLaglen, despite similar attributes to his bedeviled character in “The Informer” is here a comic figure, and actually likable despite his irascibility. Maureen O’Hara is a spitfire, able to hold her own with her bullying brother, and John Wayne is the American who has returned to the land of his birth to settle down. This time it is Wayne who is the haunted character, an ex-boxer who caused the death of a competitor in the ring, and who runs from his guilt, and all violence, to this peaceful Irish countryside.

Though we have dependable Ward Bond along as the parish priest, the rest of the cast are Irish, members of the distinguished Abbey Players. They, more than the color picture postcard scenery, give this film its charm. The stereotype of the hard-drinking, brawling Irish is more than winked at. Particularly in the famous scene where Mr. Wayne drags Miss O’Hara across the hills and fields, as townspeople swarm to watch, and the sweet village lady graciously offers Mr. Wayne a stick, “to beat the lovely lady,” we know we are being gloriously kidded by a culture that delights especially in laughing at itself.

Soon Mr. Wayne trades Maureen O’Hara for Victor McLaglen in a cross-country boxing match that wildly entertains the locals and ironically squares things between him and his brother-in-law. Barry Fitzgerald as the village matchmaker and bookie is a gem in this film. His coy smile at Maureen O’Hara as she sings at the spinet and suddenly bursts into what must have been genuine laughter at him, is delightful. The kindly act of brotherly love when the Catholics of the neighborhood pretend to be Protestants so that the visiting Church of Ireland bishop won’t remove the local vicar, played by Fitzgerald’s real-life brother Arthur Shields, and cheer him as he drives by, is a reminder that enmity and vengeance are not part of everyday life for everyone on this island.

“The Informer” is bleak; “The Quiet Man” is romantic confection, and both films together illustrate a more complete picture of a culture of fierce nationalism, religious passion, humor, oppression and human flaws than they would taken separately. Ford and his vision of his ancestral homeland is the glue. It is through his skeptical, and romantic, eye that we see this culture which has come to personify this feast day of a Christian saint.

John Wayne - 100th Anniversary

I once met an Arizona cowboy, a real cowboy, not a film one, who said he wanted to vote for John Wayne as President. That Wayne had entered politics only on the sidelines and not a candidate, and the fact that he had been deceased for some years, did not detract this cowboy from his belief that Mr. Wayne was somehow eternal, and somehow eternally the right answer to America’s problems.

John Wayne had a remarkable career, and his image on screen as someone stalwart, moral, and dispensing no-nonsense justice was, and is, appealing in a world where we have many doubts about where our society is going and who we can really trust. The 100th anniversary of John Wayne’s birth, on May 26th, will undoubtedly give us a chance to watch some of his films and remember again what made him so likeable, and so iconic an American figure.

His long career, begun in the 1920s, really took off after John Ford’s “Stagecoach” (1939), and the 1940s saw Wayne’s career blossom, from war films to westerns. By the end of the decade, he was firmly ensconced in the public’s, and the film industry’s mind as the man who made things right just by showing up. The posse and the cavalry were just there for support.

But that is image, and film is first and foremost, all about illusion. John Wayne did not bravely fight the enemy in World War II, no matter how many times he did it on the soundstage. In truth, he applied for a deferment and never served, even though many of his fellow actors, men with families and careers that were just as important to them, joined the armed forces. At the time, Mr. Wayne was criticized as caring more about his career than his country, and was disparaged as a coward, just as he would accuse men who would not serve in the armed forces during the Vietnam War of cowardice. Some have suggested that this period of his life in Hollywood during the war may have helped make him such a vocal supporter of investigations against communists in Hollywood in the 1950s and an advocate of right-wing politics in the future. Whether his later actions were because of, or in spite of, the personal choice he made during World War II not to serve, he remained a heroic figure on film, and some of his best work was when the film was less about a message and more about the man he was playing.

One of his best in this vein was in “The Quiet Man” (1952) where John Wayne plays the lone American in an Irish village, out to put a violent past behind him, only to find more exasperating, and much more comic, battles ahead of him before he finds happiness with Maureen O’Hara. He is as much the rugged individualist in the rain-swept ruins of an Irish castle, vainly trying to protect from the rain Miss O’Hara, who nestles against him in a beautifully filmed wordless scene, as he ever is leading a cavalry charge in Monument Valley.

His cross-country fistfight with Victor McLaglen is the most entertaining pummeling we are likely to see on film, and director John Ford’s stock actors, including Ward Bond, Barry Fitzgerald, Mildred Natwick, and a riotous flock of actors from Irish theater make Wayne’s Irish-born but American-raised character seem as if he is truly a man without a country.

In a world today where Americans are so disparaged abroad, it is especially poignant to see Wayne in this foreign setting, bewildered and misunderstood, but managing to fit in at last while losing none of his American individualism. He still stands tall. (At 6’4½ ” he should.) If John Wayne means different things to different people, then that is as it should be. Being allowed to express your own perspective is one of the best things about being American.

That’s all for this week. See you Monday.