The Quiet Man (1952)

The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952) "Trooper" Sean Thornton (John Wayne), ex-prize-fighter, comes back to the land of his birth, Innisfree, to reclaim his father's property in Ireland. Considered an outsider and a "Yank" he makes his peace with the locals—a pint is usually good enough to prove one's charity—and settles down for a simpler life than the one he knew.

 

And maybe forget.

 

There's just one hitch—it's "Red" Will Danaher (Victor McLaglen)—his neighbor on one side of his property is not interested in "easements." He has been looking balefully at that property for years, hoping to make it his own in pursuit of marriage with the widow Sarah Tillane (Mildred Natwick), who will have nothing to do with the brute. In spite, she sells the property to the green-horn Thornton and that is settled. Settlement is just what Thornton intends. But, it isn't easy, and he finds he has to go a few rounds with various opponents on their home turf. In Innisfree, it's war until there's peace.

It doesn't help that he's hit by "the lightning bolt" when he catches sight of a ginger sheep-tender and becomes instantly smitten. As the Luck of the Irish would have it, she's Mary Kate Danaher (Maureen O'Hara), the sister of the one man in the emerald glow of Innisfree who despises him. Mary Kate makes him feel like he's gone 10 rounds in the ring without a decision, and their besottedness is mutual, but for Kate there are issues before romance that Thornton thinks are just damn archaic, having come from The New World. 

But...when in Rome (with Roman Catholics)... He's fine with the whole town knowing about it and he's reluctantly okay with the rituals—as Mary Kate prevaricates: "Well, we just started a-courtin', and next month, we, we start the walkin' out, and the month after that there'll be the threshin' parties, and the month after that..."—of the very chaste chaperoned traditions in the country ("No patty-fingers, if you please!" warns squire Michaleen Oge Flynn—Barry Fitzgerald—"The proprieties at all times!"), even if the two adults are a bit long in the tooth to be treated as children, they can't help rebelling by jumping the buggy and setting off on their own, unsupervised. All well and good; they're two healthy adults with a rebellious streak that seems compatible—to which the ever-watchful community tacitly agrees. There's just that Danaher matter.

And that other Danaher matter: Mary Kate will not jump into marriage with Thornton without her dowry, which is being withheld by her lout of a brother. Now Squire Danaher objected to the marriage from the get-go, but some village conniving put the canard out there, that the widow Tillane would be more agreeable to marrying him if Mary Kate were out of the house. He consented to the marriage, and then was refused by the widow. In spite, he has decided to withhold Mary Kate's dowry and she won't get married without it.

And that's the last straw for Thornton, setting him down for the count. He came to Ireland to settle down—the consequences of a death at his hand in the ring—and has sworn to fight no more forever and leave the States and his past behind. But, for all the blarney and the twee village-life that he'd been expecting, all he gets is conflict. And, now, must fight again—gloves off this time, but the same Marquis of Queensbury rules—to fight for the woman he loves and against the old-school precepts and covenants that would keep them apart. To him, they're the same as the sheep-droppings that litter the countryside. And he's not the kind to count to 10.

Ford had wanted to make this movie for years—being romantically sentimental about the land of his parents (he was born in the state of Maine)—and made one of those "devil's bargain" deals with Republic Pictures—who didn't think the movie would be profitable and fought like Beelzebub to shoot it in black-and-white to cut costs—and put down some collateral to make a couple of Westerns beforehand in order to secure a promise to make this odd romantic comedy, which seemed way out of the captain's chair for the veteran director.

But, Ford's passion for Ireland comes through in every frame (even the ones shot in the studio), and it allowed him to cast some fine Irish actors (he'd do more with the community in later years) as well as his traditional stock company—his brother Francis, Ward Bond, Arthur Shields, McLaglen—and his two trusted key players, Wayne and O'Hara, to make a movie that was a little out of lock-step with what was "big" in the States (isn't defying lock-step what the movie is about?). He gets some of the best career-performances out of his cast—Wayne is particularly remarkable and nuanced—with moments that are very broad and some that are just economically and full-throttled perfect—think of Fitzgerald's line: "Impetuous! Homeric!"

That's the other thing about this movie. Although it's about adults acting like children, it also—for want of a better word—damned sexy. Wayne and O'Hara were friends—life-long pals, in fact, but never romantically interested in each other—but, their on-screen chemistry, nurtured by Ford in previous appearances together, is electric. Sparks fly between the two, because both were tough acts, head-strong and opinionated, challenging and supporting each other on-stage and off (they were quite different politically), but the two of them together made the most of every scene. They're just made for each other, at least on-screen. There are better actors, of course, but chemistry is magic, and has something more to do than technique and style.

It's Ford's love-letter to Ireland (of course, he had to shoot it in Technicolor!), acknowledging the "ditriments" along with the glories of his father's land. He'd make more movies in Ireland, (a couple quite remarkable) but nothing has the off-kilter swagger that Ford at full steam could bring. And some of the images are just beautiful...museum-quality...and you get the full effect of why Ford referred to himself as "a picture-maker." That the frame is also bursting with drama, humor and corn, means that he had more than an artist's eye. He had the blarney down cold, and the magician's economy to both wow and startle.

He wanted Ireland to be proud of him. How could they not be?

The "Quiet Man" statue located in Cong, County Mayo...where parts were filmed.

 

The Naked City

The Naked City (Jules Dassin, 1948) It started with Weegee. The homunculous photographer of New York's gritty, seemy side had published a book of his night-time photos of back-alley rendezvous, police-work, wet and dry, and New York's underbelly (fleas and all) bathed in the harsh glow of neon or Weegee's harsher strobe-flash. The book had the provocative title "Naked City," so, of course, it became a best-seller.

Producer Mark Hellinger bought the rights to make a movie of it with the intention of making a pot-boiler with the city of New York as the focal point and star. No big stars, just character actors would appear in it, and it would reflect Weegee's photography with the story of a police investigation of a lurid murder amid real New York locations. He hired screenwriters Albert Maltz and Malvin Wald for the screenplay, and to direct he brought in director Jules Dassin, whose prison drama Brute Force showed he had an unsentimental flair for that material.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, the motion picture you are about to see is called 'The Naked City.' My name is Mark Hellinger. I was in charge of its production. But I may as well tell you frankly that it's a bit different from most films you've ever seen. It was written by Albert Maltz and Alvin Wald, photographed by William Daniels and directed by Jules Dassin. As you see, you're flying over an island. A city. A particular city. And this is the story of a number of people. A story, also, of the city itself. It was not photographed in a studio. Quite the contrary, Barry Fitzgerald our star, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart, Don Taylor, Ted deCorsia and the other actors played out their roles in the streets, in the apartment houses, in the sky-scrapers of New York itself. And along with them a great many thousand New Yorkers played out their roles, also. This is the city as it is. Hot city pavements. Children at play. The building in its naked stone. People without make-up."

And for the most part, they succeeded.

Dassin can be quite "arty" in his direction, but restricted to real locations in the New York area in the middle of the day, he sometimes had to get what shot he could any way he could—hiding the camera in trucks, newsstands, anything that would keep from drawing a sizable crowd. A gawking clutch of citizenry would ruin the effect of a real story being played out. With the exception of a couple of process shots inside cars, the film pretty much keeps its promise.

But there is a disconnect. Despite the verisimilitude of the staging, the actors are still very much acting. The script, especially in its dialogue, is a bit too clever, and follows the conventions of Hollywood story construction exactly to code. This type of film had been done before with The House on 92nd Street directed by Henry Hathaway, during the noir/cost-cutting days of the studios, and would be done again with Panic in the Streets, directed by Elia Kazan. The city may be New York in 1948, but the story takes place somewhere between reality and artifice.

Hellinger, who also narrates the film (in a grand-standing display of ego that would only be equalled by Cecil B. DeMille, and less so, by John Huston and Orson Welles), succumbed to a heart attack when the film was being previewed, at the age of 44, ending a colorful career as newspaperman, screenwriter, producer, film executive, and New York gad-about. Despite the number of classic films with his name attached, Hellinger may be best remembered for the last line of his last film, which has endured and entered the pop culture.

"It is one o'clock in the morning again and this is the city. And these are the lights a child born to the name of Petori hungered for. Her passion has been played out now. Her name, her face, her history were worth five cents a day for six days. Tomorrow, a new case will hit the headlines. Yet some will remember Jean Dexter. She won't be entirely forgotten. Not entirely. Not altogether. There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them."

In 2007, The Naked City was chosen by the Library of Congress to be a part of the National Film Registry.

There are 700 movies in the Film Registry.* The Naked City is one of them.

Keeping tabs on the Naked City filming are Weegee and a pal,
a young photographer for Look magazine named Stanley Kubrick.

* They're listed here. This year's films will be announced at the end of the year.