Film Reviews by MM

Only the Americans could make a film so dripping in sentiment for an Ireland their ancestors left because of famine and grinding poverty. In John Ford’s Ireland, the country is a bucolic idyll, the characters representing Catholicism, IRA and the landed gentry are harmless eccentrics. The men spend most of their time getting drunk down the pub and settling the differences with fist fights. The treatment of women in the film is shocking, even for a 1950’s film. Sean (John Wayne) dragging his wife, Mary Kate by the scruff of her neck over 5 miles of rough ground is particularly unpleasant. Hard to believe that even in the 50s this was viewed as acceptable. The humour has not aged at all well either. Just 5 years later Hollywood would gives us “Some like it hot” a brilliantly funny and progressive film, that puts the quiet man in its place for the utter tosh that it is.