Culture, commodity, and céad míle fáilte: U.S. and Irish tourist films as a vision of Ireland

Eire-Ireland

Volumn 37, Issue 1-2, 2002, Pages 58-73

  O'Brien, Harvey ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34548678098     PISSN: 00132683     EISSN: 15505162     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/eir.2002.0004     Document Type: Review

References (35)

1. See Adele M. Dalsimer, ed. , Visualizing Ireland: National Identity and the Pictorial Tradition (Boston and London: Faber & Faber, 1993).
2. Terry Lovell, Pictures of Reality (London: BFI, 1983), 58.
3. T. J. M. Sheehy, "The Tourist Film," Vision 3 (Summer 1967), 5.
4. Derek Paget, "Tales of Cultural Tourism," in Alan Rosenthal, ed. , Why Docudrama? Fact-Fiction on Film and TV (Carbondale and Edwardsville, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1999), 47-63.
5. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1965).
6. Paget, "Tales of Cultural Tourism," 48.
7. Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation (London: Jonathan Cape, 1995), 288.
8. Micheál Ó Siochfhradha, Seo Mar Bhí (Baile Átha Cliath: Ó Fallamhain i gcomhair le hOifig an tSoláthair, 1930).
9. Problems ensue when the "corpse" is tormented by his drunken friends, who eventually light matches and stick them between his fingers. He jumps "to life" and terrifies the author. The character of the author is most probably modeled on Seán Ó Súilleabháin, whose researches into the customs of Irish wakes from 1921 eventually resulted in Irish Wake Amusements, translated by the author from the Irish original, Caitheamh Aimsire ar Thórraimh (Baile Átha Cliath: An Clóchomar Teoranta, 1961).
10. A Little Bird, Café, Hilton Cordell Productions production for RTÉ, BBC Northern Ireland, and SBS Independent (Australia), co-directed by Alan Gilsenan, Dearbhla Walsh, and David Roberts.
11. Luke Gibbons, Transformations in Irish Culture (Cork: Cork University Press/Field Day, 1996), 89.
12. The Plow That Broke the Plains (Paré Lorentz, 1936).
13. Further reading on this period and the films and photographs to emerge from it can be found in Richard M. Barsam, Non-Fiction Film (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992)
14. and Robert L. Snyder, Paré Lorentz and the Documentary Film (Reno, Las Vegas, and London: University of Nevada Press, 1994).
15. The history of Irish film has been extensively documented by Kevin Rockett, Luke Gibbons, and John Hill, Cinema and Ireland (London and New York: Routledge, 1988)
16. and, more recently, Martin McLoone, Irish Film: The Emergence of a Contemporary Cinema (London: BFI, 2000)
17. and Lance Pettitt, Screening Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).
18. Rockett, Gibbons, and Hill, Cinema and Ireland, 71.
19. See Barsam, Non-Fiction Film, Erik Barnouw, Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)
20. and Alan Rosenthal, ed. , New Challenges for Documentary (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: California University Press, 1988).
21. Richard Barsam, The Vision of Robert Flaherty (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 7.
22. For more detail on this body and on the development of Irish cinema in this era, see Rockett, Gibbons, and Hill, Cinema and Ireland
23. McLoone, Irish Film
24. and Pettitt, Screening Ireland.
25. Robert Ballagh, quoted in Gibbons, Transformations in Irish Culture, 86.
26. The film won a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, a Diploma of Merit at the Edinburgh Film Festival, First Prize at the Chicago Film Festival, and First Prize for Best Color Short at the Barcelona International Film Festival. It also was nominated for an American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Award in 1966.
27. For a fuller discussion of Mise Éire and the use of Yeats's image in the film, see Harvey O'Brien, "Historical Documentary in Ireland," Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 20 (Autumn 2000), 335-50.
28. The exact dates of production of these films is uncertain. Sources at the Irish Film Archive of the Film Institute of Ireland estimate they were made either in the late 1940s or early 1950s. The archive does not possess prints of these films (only a videotape), and thus cannot stock-date the material.
29. See Barnouw, Documentary, 348.
30. Recent analyses of The Quiet Man by McLoone, Irish Film
31. Pettitt, Screening Ireland
32. and James MacKillop, "The Quiet Man Speaks," in James MacKillop, ed. , Contemporary Irish Cinema From The Quiet Man to Dancing at Lughnasa (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1999) have redeemed this film from its pariah status in the history of the representation of Ireland on film by emphasizing its elements of self-parody and irony, including this famous moment and the cited line, spoken by John Wayne.
33. Margaret McCurtain, "The Real Molly Macree," in Adele Dalsimer, ed. , Visualizing Ireland, 11.
34. Gibbons, Transformations in Irish Culture, 85.
35. W. B. Yeats, "Among Schoolchildren. "