The
Quiet Man
As
well as one of John
Ford’s greatest box office successes, (1952), this is one of the best
beer movies ever. When American Sean Thornton (John Wayne without a
six-shooter, although there’s a decent bit of ride ‘em cowboy in a
steeplechase over the sands) returns to
Ireland, land of his birth, he stops at a pub. “I’ll try one of
those black beers,” he says. “Ah, a porter,” replies Pat Cohan
(Harry Tyler), the publican, and hand-pumped porter it is for the rest of
the film. Alas, you won’t find a lot of hand-pulled black stuff over
there nowadays. At the wedding of Thornton and Mary Kate Danaher (Maureen
O’Hara), Micheleen Flynn (Barry Fitzgerald) is given champagne and spits
it out as if poisoned; a moment later, someone hands him a proper pint, to
his enormous relief.
Put
up with some American sentimentality about Ould Oireland—it has provided
the money for Technicolor film stock that brings out the lush Galway
countryside colours in a most vivid fashion. The sound quality is a clear
clean effort and copes well with the amount of blarney thrown at it!
They
don’t make films like this nowadays and they certainly don’t make
men's headgear like you’ll see in this film.
Price-wise, look around: I got the single dvd for £4.99 in Morrisons; boxed with Rooster Cogburn it’s just £6.99 from Play.com.
©RKW