A Genre Approach to The Quiet Man (1952)
[Contains spoilers]
The Quiet Man (1952) – Genre
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, lovelies!
In honor of the holiday, this week I watched a couple American-Irish films, but I’ll only review one because the other is from 1994 and we’ve been in the 90s too much recently. That one was John Sayles’ The Secret of Roan Inish which was absolutely delightful and had a phenomenal child actor as the star opposite well-trained seals.
But, this week we’re watching a film that has always been near and dear to my heart, even though I’ve only just watched it for the first time. Yonks and years ago, my grandfather (Pappy) started calling me Maureen O’Hara. If memory serves, it was because I was moving to Ireland, had red hair, and was fiercely independent, and Pappy’s most striking image of O’Hara was in this film, The Quiet Man (1952). So for years, long before I ever even considered film as a career, back when I was still a Classicist studying uteruses and demons, when I only had an inkling of Old Hollywood and barely knew who Maureen O’Hara was, I was delighted to be called by her name. Obviously Maureen O’Hara is a goddess and the similarities ended with the hair and spirit, but it always made me smile, and every time I think of Maureen O’Hara for work purposes, I get to think of Pappy, whom we lost in 2019.
So, for St. Paddy’s, I watched The Quiet Man because my love for O’Hara and for Pappy far outweigh my hatred of John Wayne.
The Review Roulette wheel landed on Genre as our approach this week, and I think that was an unexpected gift for the viewing experience. The Quiet Man is directed by John Ford and stars John Wayne, so subconsciously I was expecting a Western because of that informed association between the pair and that genre. And I do think there are elements of that in there, but the film straddles several genres making for a strange structure of stereotypically gendered Acts.
For those unfamiliar, The Quiet Man is about Sean Thornton (Wayne), a mysterious Irishman who was raised in Pittsburgh and is now coming home to the Irish town of Inisfree. As Sean becomes embroiled in an unwanted rivalry with the town’s blowhard toxic alpha male Will Danaher (Victor McLagen), he also falls in lust for Will’s sister, Mary Kate (O’Hara). The two become infatuated with each other against Will’s wishes, an obstacle as without his consent, Sean cannot court Mary Kate.
Sean, who is John Wayne remember, is shocked by the Irish customs he must maneuver, confused as to why Mary Kate can’t make her own mind up as an independent woman. So he takes out his frustration by riding a horse real fuckin fast all over Irish hills and countryside. I assume it was contractual that John Wayne gets to ride the fuck out of a horse because it comes out of absolutely nowhere. Let’s pause here in the summary because this is the part that seems like a Western.
We have these two beefy guys, one who is an overtly violent man of the law wielding self-serving power over the town (Will) and one who is fighting an urge towards violence by being an Irish cowboy (Sean). This is a long movie at 2 hours 9 minutes, and about 50 minutes in, we get the horse riding. And to make the horse riding make sense, the next scene is a horse race where the stakes are winning the girl as the town’s clergymen devise a plan to trick Will into allowing the courtship to move forward. So it’s really high stakes, feels like the climax of the film, there’s an aggressively long horse race, and good triumphs in a feat of physical strength. Feels kinda Western as social power is transferred from Will’s corrupt hands to Sean’s manly ones.
So, I was like “that was a fun movie” and then realized there was another hour 20 left and was like oooof okay.
The next Act of the film is about their courtship and (spoiler) marriage. And I’m not gonna lie, it gets kinda cuckoo bananas. So, they’re on a chaperoned date with a guy who is a walking offensive stereotype of an Irishman, and Sean is fed up with the whole customs thing, so encourages Mary Kate to abandon it and speed up the courting to the kissing part, thus speeding up their engagement. Fine, whatever, charming rom-com time.
So the two get married, but there’s a hitch! The clergymen’s plot to trick Will into allowing the marriage is revealed, and he refuses to give Sean Mary Kate’s dowry. In the heat of the revelation, Will punches Sean in the face and we get a flashback to why Sean left America. Very rom-com. Sean, evidently, was a boxer who *killed someone* in the ring. Not very rom-com, but seed for the next genre.
When he wakes, he is embarrassed and distraught so in a manly way grabs Mary Kate’s wrist and pulls her home to tend to their wedding night, but PLOT TWIST, Mary Kate says she is no wife without her dowry and possessions, only the servant she has always been, and she refuses to consummate the marriage. The rest of this Act is dedicated to the misunderstanding/lack of communication customary to a rom-com.
Mary Kate feels that the only things in this world that she possesses define her, tie her to her ancestors, prove she is worth something. While it’s a little hefty, I fully get the idea in the repressive world they have built in this film. She explains all of this quite clearly to Sean who is like “it’s actually quite gross of you to be so hung up on money and it’s giving me the ick because I’m more evolved than you, actually,” and any sympathy you had for Sean kind of evaporates and he just seems like John Wayne for the rest of the film. Like he wanted her to be independent and strong and now he’s like “hmmm… fuck you, maybe?” Classy.
But anyway, so he refuses to understand and even make a gesture towards getting her dowry because he thinks it’s beneath him, and he goes instead to one of the clergy who knows about his boxer past to seek advice. The pastor is like “maybe try telling her the truth about who you are and what you’ve done and explain that you can’t in good conscience fight her brother because of the guilt you carry around?” and Sean is like “no, I think she just doesn’t love me.” Classic rom-com miscommunication but with a cheeky manslaughter in there.
Now we move into the third Act, a truly left field escalation in this film that now becomes a sports movie. Sean, the pacifist fighter with a heart of gold and literally lethal left hook, is forced from retirement to fight again, but not before brutalizing his girl by slapping her around and literally dragging her through rocky fields for five miles. FIVE MILES. An hour and a half walk of bad decisions and violent rage while a crowd amasses cheering him on the whole time he throws Maureen O’Hara around like a rag doll. An old woman even cuts him a switch to beat her with. But he’s a pacifist with a heart of gold.
So he gets to town and demands the dowry, throwing Mary Kate back to Will saying the marriage is off if he doesn’t get what is owed him. Now, remember, he’s doing this to prove to Mary Kate that he’s a real man and not a coward like she thinks because he won’t square up with her brother. So, Will throws him the money, and Mary Kate OPENS AN INCINERATOR AND THEY BURN IT. £350 into the fire. Symbolism.
And then it’s the longest fight sequence you’ve ever seen, spanning the whole town. Priests are betting on the winner, the town devolves into mayhem, Will and Sean become friends at the end, and Mary Kate has never been happier. Insane.
So, it’s really like three distinctly different acts with the first and last being much more in the wheelhouse of Ford and Wayne. The middle bit really comes off as “we’re doing a chick flick, and chicks do be crazy” but with a little heart as Ford can definitely do.
And ultimately I enjoyed it. I’m still honored Pappy associated me with O’Hara in it. She’s very fun in this role, if a little insane, especially in her very sharp movements. She’s feisty and fiery and fiercely independent, only wanting a partner to match her energy. I respect it and I liked the chaos of the film. But it is chaos. Kooky as hell, but well-acted (particularly a fun role for Ward Bond), and even if it was built on many layers of stereotypes, there’s a charm to the Irish landscapes and setting that can’t be ignored.
All in all, fun movie, but I remain convinced that a crisp 90 minutes is the ideal runtime for a film.
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