The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

Here are some films to take you from St. Valentine’s to St. Patrick’s.

Almost everyone in Sisters willing to name a favorite romance came up with “The Quiet Man” (1952), John Ford’s movie about an American boxer (John Wayne) who returns to his native Ireland and encounters a red-haired colleen (Maureen O’Hara).

Ford was interested in Ireland. He was christened Sean Aloysius O’Feeney (sometimes listed as John Martin Feeney) — as fine an Irish name as a bhoyo can have.

According to the New York Times’ 1952 review, he studied the Irish for 40 years, said he still didn’t know a thing about them and insisted that he never met an Irishman with whom he could agree.

Despite its many delights, you will have to forgive the macho moments in this tale of Sean Thornton, Mary Kate Danaher, her brother (Victor McLaglen), Father Lonergan (Ward Bond), a matchmaker (Michaleen Flynn) and her dowry (furniture and 350 pounds sterling).

Quite unlike a modern maid, Mary Kate waits on Sean hand and foot, offers him a branch to beat her, lets him forcibly bed her and succumbs to being dragged half across Ireland when he’s mad. But she’s no helpless female. She’s a spitfire and not above giving Sean a good slap when needed.

And she gets what she wants in the end — Sean plus her dowry.

Life is not so simple in another classic tale of Irish romance, “Ryan’s Daughter” (1970), made by an Englishman, David Lean. This two-tape tale was unfairly panned by critics who ignored its political foundation and how the love story was built upon it. Consequently, the reviewers did not understand why the villagers act as they do nor the political implications of the main characters’ actions.

Like Lean’s “Dr. Zhivago,” “Ryan’s Daughter” is a story of love in the midst of war. It tells how a few people used a legitimate political position to behave despicably during World War I.

Some 210,000 Irishmen, most of them volunteers, served in the war. About 35,000 of them died. They included both Republicans (who believed in an independent, free Ireland) and Unionists (who wanted to remain tied to England).

While Irish and British soldiers were fighting the Germans together, some Republican radicals staged the 1916 Easter Rebellion which killed 500 people in Dublin. The Germans were rumored to have helped the rebels.

In “Ryan’s Daughter” sympathetic townspeople collect contraband brought to republican rebels by a German ship.

On top of such treachery and longing for freedom lies the story of Rose (Sarah Miles), the young wife of a middle-aged, kind-but-passionless school teacher, Charles (Robert Mitchum). She falls for a wounded and shell-shocked war hero, not only because he is handsome and a fiery lover but also because he is incredibly sad and needs her.

He is a British officer assigned to keep the Irish in hand.

A store clerk says to Rose, “There’s loose women and whores and then there’s British soldiers’ whores.” When the townspeople attack Rose, her father sacrifices her to his own self-interest.

“Ryan’s Daughter” is a serious and beautiful film.

To restore your equilibrium and faith in Irish ebullience, watch “The Matchmaker” (1997), directed by Mark Joffe, who was born in Russia (everyone seems fascinated by the Irish).

A Senator from Irish-clogged Boston tries to raise his re-election chances by finding some Irish ancestors. To accomplish this task, he sends his assistant Marcy (Janeane Garofalo) to a village during its annual Matchmaking Festival.

Marcy tries to concentrate on her assignment while being seduced by an equally unaware young man, an old matchmaker, and the charming village as a whole. You, too, will be seduced.