THE QUIET MAN KISSES

A first kiss is always memorable. It always intimates something more, of a moment of passion that has yet to be realized. But there is always a hint and a spark the first moment that lovers meet.

 

The tints and shades of the vibrant images in The Quiet Man also promise deep passion, and the ethereal blues and fleshly reds of Mary Kate Danaher’s shepherdess ensemble evoke images of Madonnas reposing in cathedrals and churches, but Mary Kate evokes the promise of the flesh with the dedication of fealty to her heritage, her church, and her own convictions. When Sean Thornton is stricken by the vision of Mary Kate in the meadow tending to the sheep, her gaze promises that her “Walls of Jericho” eventually will crumble in dedication and in response equal to the flood of Sean Thornton’s emotions.

The first kiss: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MkQyRE0byBI

Sean is searching in the dark, confused and unsure of his feelings. He knows something has changed in the cottage. He realizes something is different. The undulating rhythm of the wind ignites passion like the fire burning in the center of the frame at the beginning of the scene, like the fire burning in the hearts of the lovers. They both  recognize the passion.  It initiates, approaches, retreats, and finally resolves into the physical manifestation of Mary Kate’s slap, revealing how she still struggles with the strength of her desires for Sean Thornton.

In The Quiet Man, the first kiss between Mary Kate Danaher and Sean Thornton, does just that. It reveals a tempestuousness, a desire, and an incomparable yet incomplete passion, and  viewers recognize that unrequited passion, either from their own lives, or in the lives of others. The yearning and desire from the first kiss in The Quiet Man between Mary Kate and Sean reveals expectation, but once the initial kiss is rebuffed by Mary Kate’s slap, viewers are strapped in for the desperate buggy ride to the final moment of  The Quiet Man‘s fully-realized passion later in the film.

 

In the cemetery, Mary Kate and Sean both reveal they don’t want to wait for the “walking out together” or the “thrashing parties.” Their first embrace, however, elicits a bolt of lightening and a clap of thunder, and Mary Kate immediately makes the sign of the cross over her heart, revealing her fear that her love for a man has superseded the desires of her loyalty to her God and her church. She seeks a divine protection from the unbridled passion in her soul.

Mary Kate then looks at Sean with a fear in her eyes, and retreats to the safety of the arch of a long-disintegrated church or chapel, bringing Sean into her imagined comfort zone.  Sean follows her, and they release the desire they have felt since Sean first saw the vision of the shepherdess in the verdant meadow. Mary Kate doesn’t retreat from Sean’s attentions anymore.

The second kiss: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hHWdzUvXecQ

Surrounded by a storm and weathering the drops of rain anointing their love, they commit to each other’s desires and passions under the arch that represents an accepting embrace of their fleshly plea for each other.

Maureen O’Hara, in her 2004 autobiography with John Nicoletti, ‘Tis Herself, revealed her explanation for the lasting nature of the popularity of those scenes: “Why is the scene so erotic? Why were Duke and I so electric in our love scenes together? I was the only leading lady big enough and tough enough for John Wayne. Duke’s presence was so strong that when audiences saw him finally meet a woman of equal hell and fire, it was exciting and thrilling” and during “those moments  of tenderness, when the lovemaking was about to begin, audiences saw  for a half-second that he had finally tamed me–but only for that half-second.”

 

In light of the Pope’s visit to this hemisphere this week, it is fitting that such a film be discussed on such a historic day and in conjunction with St. Valentine’s Day. The struggles allowed to voice themselves in John Ford’s The Quiet Man reveal how closely, in some respects, the film adheres to Catholic precepts of proper behavior in the 1950s. Mary Kate Danaher exemplifies chastity before marriage, acquiescing to her religious beliefs, but the worldly Sean Thornton brings all the disregard of tradition expected of a worldly-wise pugilist. His resolve to win the heart of the woman he loves forces him to reevaluate his attitude toward local Irish traditions, Catholic religious beliefs, and the village that raises his inner child, as well as the woman who ignites his soul.

Do real life experiences ever approach the passion in this film? They obviously do, or at least viewers of this film hope they do. To find such a passion, experience it, and accept it is what makes our existence thrive and resonate with our own desires.

Here’s hoping all visitors to the Kissathon have such a kiss in your future!

Read more about what people have said about The Quiet Man…

Link to article and official trailer for “Discovering The Quiet Man” Documentary:

http://www.irishcentral.com/culture/entertainment/new-quiet-man-documentary-reveals-stormy-relationship-between-maureen-ohara-and-john-ford-154426385-237506091.html

Leonard Maltin discusses the “Discovering The Quiet Man” Documentary: http://blogs.indiewire.com/leonardmaltin/re-examining-john-wayne-and-the-quiet-man-20150309

Malachy McCourt and his disdain for The Quiet Man: http://www.irishcentral.com/culture/entertainment/Quiet-Man-an-idiotic-stupid-anti-Irish-film-Malachy-McCourt.html

Aurora roars about The Quiet Man: http://aurorasginjoint.com/2012/07/31/the-quiet-man/

The official TCM comments: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/24069/The-Quiet-Man/articles.html

I would be remiss in my duties to fans of Miss O’Hara if I did not reiterate Miss O’Hara’s urging to audiences at the TCM Film Festival in 2014 that her religious beliefs played a very important part in her life and the decisions she made during her introduction to How Green Was My Valley with Robert Osborne.

“It is wonderful to be the age I am, and still have God unable to put up with me”: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e3IhZu6Fb6w

Scorsese on the smooch: http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/scorsese-quiet-man-kiss-is-one-of-cinemas-best-217816.html

 

This post was created in conjunction with Second Sight Cinema for “A Kiss is Just a Kiss Blogathon” here: http://secondsightcinema.com/happy-valentines-day-weekend-weldome-to-the-you-must-remember-this-a-kiss-is-just-a-kiss-blogathon/

Check out all the fabulous blog posts about kisses! http://secondsightcinema.com/happy-valentines-day-weekend-weldome-to-the-you-must-remember-this-a-kiss-is-just-a-kiss-blogathon/

Maureen O’Hara and John Ford’s Way With Women

Maureen O’Hara at the Turner Classic Film Festival 2014 in April….

Maureen O’Hara, 93, and still as feisty as ever, travelled from Idaho this year where she lives with her grandson and his family to attend the TCMFF 2014, introduce How Green Was My Valley with Robert Osborne, and have a short interview with Osborne in the lobby of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

This image must be one of Maureen O’Hara’s favorites as she chose it for the cover of her 2004 autobiography…

Even though her career spans 62 years, Robert Osborne writes in this month’s Now Playing Guide for TCM that she has been filmed in Technicolor more than any other actress (34 times) and “she has lost none of her Irish spunk.” During her interview with Osborne prior to the screening of How Green Was My Valley at the Turner Classic Film Festival in 2014, Osborne asked her how it was working with director John Ford, and she proclaimed, “I thought we were here to talk about me!” She began her film career under contract to Charles Laughton and his production partner with the film Jamaica Inn, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

As Esmeralda in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” with Charles Laughton…

Her conversation with Osborne also revealed her devotion to Laughton for nurturing her career (she would appear as Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Laughton as part of her contract with him.) “What more can someone do for you,” she proudly stated, “than start you off in life.”

Fans crowd around O’Hara and TCM Host Robert Osborne in the lobby of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in April for her interview during the TCM Film Festival…

David Meuel’s new book, Women in the Films of John Ford, reveals how O’Hara’s development as an actress under the guidance of Ford paralleled some of the patterns of achievement that other actresses experienced under his astute on-set dictatorship. Mildred Natwick’s short, but pivotal scene in 3 Godfathers reveals how Ford could wield one shining moment into the fabric of the next half of a film.

Mildred Natwick and John Wayne in “3 Godfathers”

As Natwick’s character lay dying after the birth of her son, she asks the three men gathered round her, “Will you save my baby?”

Honoring the request from the mother…

Then her final statement resonates throughout the rest of the film,” You tell him about his mother who so wanted to live…for him,” and her comments underscore all the ensuing motivations of the three godfathers.

Forming a plan…

Natwick’s comments in Meuel’s book reveal that “I’ve never forgotten that Ford seemed pleased with the scene and pleased that I’d done it.” She sensed from Ford how to play the role because ” you get things by osmosis from a wonderful director.”

Jane Darwell’s performance in The Grapes of Wrath also reveals how Ford inspired Darwell, already a well-known and well-respected performer, to greater acclaim.

Ma Joad facing yet another hardship…

Darwell’s career as a Hollywood character actress followed her many years as a devoted stage actress, but her most well-known role, besides that of being the bird lady in Mary Poppins, was that of Ma Joad in the successful screen adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. One reason of the enduring popularity of the character of Ma Joad, according to Meuel, is that Darwell’s characterization “has become a synonym for women who bear great hardship with great dignity.” Darwell also became “a favorite of Ford’s” as she appeared in My Darling Clementine, 3 Godfathers, and The Sun Shines Bright.

Initially, Ford wanted O’Hara for the role of Honey Bear Kelly in Mogambo, according to Meuel, and ended up with Ava Gardner, an actress “he didn’t think was all that good.” But in Mogambo, Gardner earned her first and only Academy Award nomination, and her performance is one of her best.

Grace Kelly and Ava Gardner in “Mogambo.”

According to the TCM Database article explaining why Mogambo is an ‘essential,’ “Ava Gardner turned out to be a much greater beneficiary of Ford’s instruction on Mogambo. Her work as Honey Bear Kelly is marked by an ease, even a playfulness, that would seldom if ever surface in her following projects.”

So Ford could wrench an effective performance from someone he deemed initially as less successful at her craft than O’Hara. He elicited those sterling screen seconds in his own way, and made Natwick, Darwell, Gardner, O’Hara, and others the better.

But O’Hara’s opinions and comments, revealed through the years in interviews and O’Hara’s own autobiography that her relationship with Ford alternated from rocky to smooth, and her comments vacillated from his admiring pupil to a woman who always staunchly defended his directing, but sometimes questioned his motives.

Like the time Ford slapped O’Hara for talking to another director. The event strained their relationship, and she never understood why Ford had acted that way, but she eventually went back to engaging in conversation with him and working for him.

‘Tis her favorite scene in “How Green Was My Valley.”

The Ford/O’Hara relationship spanned 20 years and began on the set of 1941’s How Green Was My Valley, the film O’Hara introduced at the Turner Classic Film Festival on April 12 in the El Capitan Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Her favorite moment in the film, documented in her autobiography, occurs when her character of Angharad is “outside the church after Angharad gets married. As I make my way down the steps to the carriage waiting below, the wind catches my veil and fans it out in a perfect circle all the way around my face. Then it floats straight up above my head and points to the heavens. It’s breathtaking.” She was obviously impressed with the way she had been showcased in her career-making initial role with Ford.

The triumvirate…

Her collaboration with John Wayne in three of Ford’s films, Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, and The Wings of Eagles, also revealed that the romantic chemistry she had with Wayne was like “lightning in a bottle.”

“Lightning in a bottle….”

But her fourth Ford collaboration, 1955’s The Long Gray Line, also starring Tyrone Power, had O’Hara revealing that “it was by far the most difficult” film she had made with Ford.

Tough…

Not so tough…she adored Tyrone Power’s wicked sense of humor, and here they are together in “The Black Swan”…

Setting many of his films in the past often saddled Ford with the label of being “old-fashioned” but as O’Hara has claimed in interviews and her 2004 autobiography, ‘Tis Herself, Ford loved anything Irish, and any way he could maneuver more Irishness into his films or his own personal life was a way to reconnect or reconstruct his life to his own more idealized version of itself.

O’Hara’s relationships with men who lived large on life’s stage, like Che Guevara, whom she deemed a “freedom fighter,”surprised her when she found out how much he knew about Ireland. Her last husband, Charles Blair, whom she adored, was a record-setting aviator and Brigadier General in the Air Force. The legendary John Wayne, for whom she lobbied Congress to award him a Congressional Medal of Honor, was also one of those connections that paired O’Hara socially and/or professionally with some of the most daring or famous men of the 20th century.

On the Red Carpet at the Turner Classic Film Festival with her grandson, Conor Fitzsimons…

During her one of her festival interviews with Osborne, she finally stated that “Ford loved being Irish, and was thrilled when he could do something involved with Ireland. Anybody who is very talented and very good at their job… 90 percent of the time will treat you well.” And 90 percent seems to be the magic number Maureen O’Hara has designated for John Ford.

‘Tis all there is to say or write or think about the matter….

Sources, Links, and Websites:
David Meuel’s Women in the Films of John Ford:

Maureen O’Hara’s ‘Tis Herself: http://www.amazon.com/Tis-Herself-Autobiography-Maureen-OHara/dp/0743269160

The fabulous “Direced By John Ford” Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Directedbyjohnfordcom/398684916875651?ref=ts&fref=ts

Moving tribute video by June Parker Beck with Robert Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”: http://t.co/er6MiUGoXY
IMDB Biography of Maureen O’Hara: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000058/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
Maureen O’Hara’s Star of the Month Celebration on TCM, TUESDAYS IN JULY: http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/1008293|0/Maureen-O-Hara-Tuesdays-in-July.html
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Maureen-OHara-Magazine-Website/131269913567989?ref=ts&fref=ts
Fan Website: http://moharamagazine.com
Wikipedia:http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maureen_O’Hara

I am so happy to be included in “The John Ford Blogathon” from July 7-13 hosted by Krell Laboratories: http://krelllabs.blogspot.com/2014_07_01_archive.html

Follow me on Twitter @suesueapplegate
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christy.putnam.5?ref=tn_tnmn
The Silver Screen Oasis: http://silverscreenoasis.com/oasis3/viewtopic.php?f=92&t=4260&start=840
KKES Radio Classic Film Expert, Sundays from 12-1p.m.: http://www.1027thehog.com
TCM Message Boards: http://forums.tcm.com/index.php?/topic/39646-sue-sue-ii/
The Examiner.com: http://www.examiner.com/classic-film-in-national/christy-putnam

TCM’s ULTIMATE FAN VIDEOS BY FILM TITLE

Wow! I am surprised by some of the films chosen, but delighted that there are so many wonderfully talented fans of Turner Classic Movies.

There are 104 entries in TCM’s Ultimate Fan Contest as of Monday evening, October 28, 2013, and several of the films have two videos already:
Gone With The Wind, Sabrina, All About Eve, Arsenic and Old Lace, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Quiet Man, Cool Hand Luke, and The Clown.

What is so refreshing is that Red Skelton’s The Clown has two, and obviously Skelton has not been forgotten for his contribution to film, eventhough he is probably more famous as a television star. Gone With the Wind is always popular, and Audrey Hepburn has two films listed, Sabrina, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
A Christmas Carol
The Adventures of Prince Achmed
A Hard Day’s Night
All About Eve (2)
Among The Living
An American in Paris
Arsenic and Old Lace (2)

Baron of Arizona
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Birds
Blue Velvet
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (2)
Brief Encounter
Bringing Up Baby
Bullitt

Casablanca
Charley’s Aunt
The Chase
Cinema Paradiso
The Clown (2)
Cool Hand Luke(2)
Count Three and Pray

Dodsworth

Father of the Bride
Frankenstein

Giant
Grand Hotel
The Great Waltz
The Great Ziegfield
Gone With The Wind (2)
Guys and Dolls

High and Low
The Hill
Hoodoo Ann
How Green Was My Valley
How To Marry A Millionaire
The House on Haunted Hill

If A Man Answers
I Love You Again
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Inherit the Wind
It Happened One Night
It’s A Wonderful Life

The Jazz Singer

Kings Go Forth

The Lady Eve

The Mad Miss Manton
The Major and The Minor
Manhattan Murder Mystery
Mary Poppins
Midnight
Mr. Blandings Builds Hi Dream House
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

1900
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
Night of the Hunter
Night of the Living Dead
North By Northwest
Notorious

One Way Passage
Out of Sight

Peeping Tom
Phantom of the Opera (’43)
The Philadelphia Story
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Psycho

The Quiet Man (2)

Random Harvest
The Rat Race
Rebecca
Rio Bravo

Sabrina (2)
Senso
Shall We Dance?
Singin’ in the Rain
The Shop Around The Corner
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Stranger
Stella
Sunset Boulevard

The Third Man
The Three Musketeers
To Catch A Thief
To Have and Have Not
Top Hat
Trouble in Paradise
Two Lane Blacktop

Where The Sidewalk Ends
The Wrong Man
The Wings of Eagles
The Wizard of Oz
Withnail and I

Ziegfield Girl

Follow the link to the Official Site of the TCM ULTIMATE FAN CONTEST: http://fancontest.tcm.com/

Final Updates will be posted at the end of the contest!