Imdb Rating 7.9
No one can paint a picture on the silver screen like director John Ford, and in this visit back to Ireland John Martin Feeney (Ford) used all his magic. The movie stars John Wayne as Sean Thornton, an American ex-boxer from Pittsburgh who returns to his birthplace to escape from a bad experience. One look at Mary Kate Danaher (Maureen O’Hara) is all it took, and Sean is smitten. But the courtship rituals are not the same in the Emerald Isle. Mary Kate's brother Will (Victor McLaglen) stands in the way of the couple.
Ford does a great job of mixing comedy, drama and romance and I think the movie works in each of those genres. The main strenght of the movies is in the supporting cast. Barry Fitzgerald, Ward Bond and Arthur Shields have wonderful parts and some wonderful scenes and some wonderful dialogue. Sometimes you should let the movie talk for itself.
Will Danaher: He'll regret it till his dying day, if ever he lives that long.
Father Lonergan: Ah, yes... I knew your people, Sean. Your grandfather; he died in Australia, in a penal colony. And your father, he was a good man too.
Mary Kate Danaher: Could you use a little water in your whiskey?
Michaleen Flynn: When I drink whiskey, I drink whiskey; and when I drink water, I drink water.
Will Danaher: So the I.R.A.'s in this too, huh?
Hugh Forbes: If it were, Red Will Danaher, not a scorched stone 'o your fine house'd be standin'.
Michaleen Flynn: A beautiful sentiment!
Father Peter Lonergan, Narrator: Well, then. Now. I'll begin at the beginnin'. A fine soft day in the spring, it was, when the train pulled into Castletown, three hours late as usual, and himself got off. He didn't have the look of an American tourist at all about him. Not a camera on him; what was worse, not even a fishin' rod.
Michaleen Flynn: America - ha! Prohibition! You see that over there? That's the ancestral home of ancient Flynns. It was taken from us by... by... by the Druids!
Mary Kate Danaher: Father, could I... tell you in the Irish?
Father Peter Lonergan: [distracted, fishing] Sea, sea.
Mary Kate Danaher: [very hesitantly] Níor lig mé m'fhear chéile isteach i mo leaba liom aréir. Chuir mé fuinneamh air a chodladh i - Ó, i mála codlata! Mála codlata!
Father Peter Lonergan: Céad é sin? Bag?
Mary Kate Danaher: Sleeping bag, Father, with... with buttons! Más breá é, níor rith sé ar a shon. An peaca é?
Father Peter Lonergan: Woman, Ireland may be a poor country, God help us. But here, a married man sleeps in a bed, not a bag!
Will Danaher: I'll let you buy me a drink, at your wake! Ha!
Michaleen Flynn: I don't suppose there's a drop of anything wet in the house?
Will Danaher: Help yourself to the buttermilk.
Michaleen Flynn: Buttermilk!
Michaleen Flynn: The Borgias would do better.
Michaleen Flynn: Well it's a nice, soft night, so I think I'll go and join me comrades, and talk a little treason. G'night Sean.
The Quiet Man is a movie that is easy to fall in love with, and I fell a long time ago. It's really hard to mix comedy and drama, but John Ford was the master.
