FILM CRITICISM: The Quiet Man . . . and Beyond: Reflections on a Classic Film, John Ford and IrelandEdited by Seán Crossan and Rod Stoneman, The Liffey Press, 264pp, €19.95
LIKE MANY of the classics of the Irish stage, such as those of Boucicault, Synge and O'Casey, John Ford's The Quiet Manwalks a remarkably fine line between low farce and high fantasy. This may account for its enduring popular appeal, but it also explains why Ford's film continues to provoke debate among specialists, some contemporary film critics regarding it as one of the most accomplished works of Irish cinema, others remaining decidedly sceptical. For the most part, the contributors to this volume acquiesce with the current critical consensus and treat The Quiet Manas a culturally consequential work, the collection setting out to explain the film's popular appeal and to consider the histories of its production and reception.
The Quiet Man. . . and Beyond is obviously a tribute to Ford's film, but it is equally a tribute to Luke Gibbons's criticism. In a pioneering chapter, "Romanticism, Realism and Irish Cinema", which appeared in Cinema and Ireland(1987), the foundational work of Irish film criticism that he co-authored with Kevin Rockett and John Hill, Gibbons challenged the idea that "realism" in Irish cinema ought automatically to be equated with hard-edged social criticism and progressive politics, and "romance" with soft-focus escapism and political regression. Dismantling this critical vocabulary, a staple of Irish cultural criticism since Sean O'Faolain, Gibbons prepared the way for a major revaluation of The Quiet Man, one he later consolidated in his short book on that film in 2002. Widely berated as a risible version of screen Oirishry and regressive nostalgia, Ford's work, Gibbons argued, was actually much more playfully self-conscious than most critics allowed. Rather than simplistically promoting Ireland as a premodern retreat from the torments of modernity, it continually called its own representations of "the real" into question and knowingly played off against each other a mythic but communal Irish west and an individualistic but equally mythic American Dream. Gibbons's essay is a central referent for practically every essay in the volume, a testimony to its provocative power.
John Hill, in one of the more fascinating chapters in The Quiet Man . . . and Beyond, resurrects a piece originally intended for, but withheld from, publication in Cinema and Irelandtwo decades earlier. Hill agrees that The Quiet Manis a formally self-aware and self-divided work, but argues that Gibbons overstates its comedic subversiveness. Whereas Gibbons contends that Ford's Irish idyll expresses a desire for collective regeneration and inclusion, Hill suggests that it is conservative because it effaces class, gender and religious tensions in a cosy vision of national consensus. However, Hill would have to update his original essay more strenuously than he does here to contest Gibbons effectively, and the piece does not present a compelling counter-reading. Moreover, the most ambitious essays tend to support or qualify Gibbons's take rather than substantially to revise it. For example, Eamonn Slater's fine article argues that the lush landscapes of Ashford Castle, where some of the film was shot, are actually indebted to British romanticism and to the parklands picturesque of the Irish Ascendancy. Viewed thus, The Quiet Manbrings together not just clashing Irish and American versions of romanticised landscape, but also an Austenesque English version, with John Wayne's and Maureen O'Hara's wet-shirt courtship prefiguring that of Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle in Pride and Prejudiceperhaps.
Fidelma Farley adds a Scottish angle, usefully comparing the treatment of tradition and modernity in The Quiet Manwith that in Brigadoon, and contrasting different responses to these issues in Irish and Scottish film studies.
Other pieces by Sean Ryder, Catríona Ó Torna and Brian Ó Conchubhair, Roddy Flynn, Dióg O’Connell and Rod Stoneman all usefully round out diverse aspects of this iconic film and situate it in wider politico-cultural contexts. This volume will be enjoyed by those interested in Ford’s relationship to Ireland and in Ireland’s relationship to the dreamworlds and catastrophes of American cinema and American capital.
Joe Cleary is a professor of English literature in NUI Maynooth. His Outrageous Fortune: Capital and Culture in Modern Irelandwas published by Field Day Publications in 2007