The Quiet Man is the bogeyman of Irish cinema. Shot on location in County Mayo in the west of Ireland in 1951, it’s both the most significant—and most acclaimed—screen depiction of the country before an indigenous film industry developed in the 1990s, a go-to example of stage Irish buffoonery that Irish cinema has raced away from. When An Cailín Ciúin—the first Irish language film to be nominated for an Oscar—powered itself to the Academy Awards last year, its English title framed it as a reply to John Ford’s fantasy depiction of Ireland: The Quiet Girl.
Irish people lay claim to and celebrate The Quiet Man—there’s a whole museum in the village where it was filmed—but just as often, cringe away from it. We anxiously imagine that this is how Americans see us. But the truth is, The Quiet Man is a much bigger deal to us than it could ever be to them.
I wrote about The Quiet Man and John Ford’s complicated diasporic nostalgia for Bright Wall/Dark Room. You can read it here!
The Sundae 