Blarney Stoned

Our Irish-American reporter investigates an appalling number of movies about Irish people to determine which film constitutes the soggiest peat bog of Celtic clichés.

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Nobody goes to Ireland to make a Western, a sci-fi fantasy, an Adam Sandler movie or a film about teetotalers. In the entire history of motion pictures, an average of fewer than one film per year has been made about the Emerald Isle, and judging by the results, that seems to be more than enough.

In recent years, though, there has been an explosion of films set in Ireland or involving the Irish, including such big-budget affairs as Far and Away and such well-received smaller films as The Commitments. Even for a proud Irish-American such as myself, whose grandparents hail from County Cork, this is a development that must be viewed with a certain amount of apprehension.

Let me explain.

Almost without exception, motion pictures about Ireland--whether they are set in the North, the South, the 20th century or the 19th century--fall into one of two categories. Either they are searing portrayals of the struggles of the Irish Republican Army against the brutal heirs of Oliver Cromwell, or they are charming films filled with mirth and wit about wee, lovable, canny Irishfolk.

The first group of films, which includes everything from Odd Man Out, Cal and In the Name of the Father to Patriot Games, The Crying Game and A Prayer for the Dying, are all cut from the same mold: we're a pretty nasty lot, but it's the Brits' fault. The films in the second group, which includes everything from Ryan's Daughter, The Quiet Man and The Secret of Roan Inish to Circle of Friends. The Field and Far and Away, are, like I said, wee and canny and full of wit and wisdom. They are charming and knowing and wise and innocent. They are both sweet and bittersweet. Collectively and individually, they constitute one of the biggest loads of horseshit that ever came down the pike. They are twaddle. They are balderdash. They are malarkey.

They are blarney.

Personally, it would be all right with me if people went on making IRA-versus-the Brits films until the cows came home. Even though even movie about the IRA basically has the same plot--serious revolutionaries eventually become as remorseless as the people they are revolting against--I've found that most films of this sort are up to a pretty high standard. With two notable exceptions--_The Informer_ and A Prayer for the Dying--these films try to steer clear of the maudlin, cry-in-your-beer, who'll save the Old Sod? tradition that is such a cornerstone of Celtic culture.

But the wee, canny, charming films about the lovable Irish are another matter entirely.

In the following pages, I would like to discuss a number of Irish-themed films in an effort to determine which Mick movie constitutes the biggest load of blarney available at the video store today, In doing so, I am trying to register my own horror as an Irish-American at the proliferation of motion pictures that attempt in some way to advance the notion that Irish people are secretly leprechauns. I am aware that I am also inadvertently performing a public service for many of my Irish-American friends by making it that much easier for them to pick out films most suited to their mawkish needs come March 17. Not all Irish-Americans are philosophically opposed to blarney. The sad truth is, a lot of my Irish-American friends secretly think they are leprechauns.

First, some history, Cinematic blarney of a high order first rose in the 1935 classic The Informer, which is basically an IRA-versus-the-Brits film, but instead of being gritty like other movies of the same genre, is a ghastly encyclopedia of Irish sentimentality. This is the film in which Victor McLaglen won an Academy Award by playing a cash-strapped idiot who sells his best friend-- an IRA gunman--down the river for 20 pounds, then attracts the attention of the entire Irish Republican Army by throwing a party for everyone in Dublin-- pulling a sort of GoodFellas Goes to Galway. Based on a very fine novel by Liam O'Flaherty, the film is practically impossible to sit through today, largely because Victor McLaglen is all too convincing as a complete idiot. With its weeping mothers, lugubrious wakes, flailing shillelaghs, boisterous pubs, drunken layabouts, ubiquitous crucifixes, gentle clerics, duplicitous Englishmen, angelic choirs, contrite stool pigeons, faithful sisters, lovable tarts, implacable inoperative and piping pipes, The Informer is a masterpiece of celluloid blarney, a film that has towered over its competitors for more than half a century.

It concludes with a scene so replete with blarney that it has set the standard by which all subsequent Irish films must be judged. The mortally wounded McLaglen staggers into the church to beg his best friend's mother to forgive him. Being Catholic, she does. Overjoyed that he has been absolved of his heinous crime, McLaglen bellows: "Frankie, your mother forgives me!" Then he tumbles to the ground, slain by the IRA, in the shadow of a crucifix from which a bleary-eyed Christ looks on. You get the idea from looking at the expression on Christ's face that this is not the first time he's seen one of these over-the-top performances.

For many, many years, The Informer reigned as the undisputed King of Blarney. In the '50s and '60s, the only serious challenger for sheer acreage of malarkey was The Quiet Man, which has more than its share of clerics, pubs, pipes and canny locals, but is basically about John Wayne, an American who is playing an American, so the potential for blarney is curtailed. I don't mean to suggest that The Quiet Man is not a huge load of blarney. It was, after all, made by the same guy who made The Informer, John Ford. I am only saying that if The Informer registers a solid 9.9 on the Shamrock Scale, The Quiet Man is but a respectable 8.5.

For the next 30 years or so, movies made about the Irish were either overtly silly or merely strange. Disney honored the Emerald Isle twice--in The Fighting Prince of Donegal, a 1966 lightweight swashbuckler, and Darby O'Gill and the Little People, a piece of leprechaun-ridden fluff that was produced back in 1959. Both were aggressively charming films filled with wee. canny folk, but because of their essentially frivolous nature--they were Disney flicks--neither picture could seriously contend for the title of King of Blarney.

In 1970, David Lean made his own valentine to the land of his forebears. This epic tale (originally 206 minutes, but later cut to 176 minutes after an appeal by the Vatican for mercy) of a schoolteacher's wife who enters into a doomed relationship with a British soldier is one of the flattest, least affecting movies ever made. Clearly designed to be a "big film," Ryan's Daughter is hamstrung by a meandering plot and a spectacularly miscast Robert Mitchum, who plays the cuckolded schoolteacher. Though it comes with the full complement of wise old clerics, lovable village idiots and canny locals, Ryan's Daughter never seriously emerged as a threat to The Informer's position as the biggest load of blarney ever made. It didn't have nearly enough pipes.

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