Friday, April 9, 2010

I will arise and go now...


...and kick some butt at Innisfree! Has anyone out there ever seen the movie The Quiet Man? It's brilliant. John Wayne plays Sean Thornton, a champion American boxer who at the beginning of the movie accidentally kills a man in the ring. He is horrified by it, and, racked with guilt and filled with a desire for healing, he moves back to the family town of Innisfree in Ireland where he was born. He says he'll never fight again. In Ireland. Right. Well, he falls in love with Mary-Kate Danaher...understandable, as she is played by the alderfairest Maureen O'Hara. Unfortunately, her wealthy brother Will despises Thornton and refuses to pay Mary-Kate's dowry when she marries him, and Thornton responds with scornful indifference. To an American man, a dowry seems completely alien, inconsequential and even immoral--all you need is love, right?--but to Mary-Kate, the dowry represents her right and property (not Thornton's) as a married woman, and she sees Thornton's indifference to it as indifference both to her right and to his own honor. He must get it, or at least fight her brother for it, who is himself something of a legendary scrapper. Well, that happens eventually, of course. Thornton relents to this way of seeing things, but even in relenting, and perhaps especially in relenting in this case, John Wayne acts the man. One of my favorite scenes in any movie is when Will Danaher throws Mary-Kate's dowry money on the ground. Sean picks it up, walks over to the furnace of a threshing machine with Mary-Kate, who opens it, and he throws it in, after which Mary-Kate tells him supper will be waiting for him when he gets home, knowing there's about to be a massive brawl between her now-unimpededly beloved husband and her brother. You can see it here:


Mary-Kate is a scrapper as well. She's just as likely to smack Thornton on the mouth with her fist as with her lips. But he takes both in his stride, of course. I mean, it's John Wayne, pilgrum. Overall, it's Maureen O'Hara that steals the show, I think. She's completely stunning--technicolor was made for that red hair--by turns ferocious as a wolf and mild as a lamb. Great match for John Wayne, who's just...so...there. Watch it. Enjoy it.

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