Kevin Rockett. The Irish filmography: fiction films 1896 - 1996. Dublin: Red Mountain Media Limited. 1996.
ISBN 0 9526698 0 3.
757pp
(For cost and ordering information, see New Titles)Kevin Rockett and Eugene Finn. Still Irish: a century of Irish in film. Dublin: Red Mountain Press, 1995.
ISBN 1 900361 00 0.
155pp.
(For cost and ordering information, see New Titles)
Uploaded on 16 June, 1997 | 3300 words
Kevin Rockett's The Irish filmography is an indispensable tool for the researcher. It is unlikely to be read from cover to cover in a sitting, but it is absorbing to graze amongst its pages or to pursue particular references. It provides a valuable source of information about a large group of international narrative feature films gathered together under the head of their general association with Ireland. The book takes Irish feature film making as its primary interest, but the bulk of the entries concerns films made outside Ireland.
Rockett identifies about one hundred Irish feature films that have been produced in Ireland in the last hundred years; one each year on average but in reality the bulk of them made since 1980. It was a useful number to flourish in the year in which the book was published (1996), 1995 being the year proclaimed for the centenary of international cinema, but his interest in feature films that included some connection to Ireland inevitably lead him further afield. The tacit definition of acceptable content for suitable entries included (at least) the following categories; the appearance of Irish political and social narrative, of Irish characters, Irish arts (like music and dance), even just the unmistakable Irish patina that has resulted from the internecine wars and religious differences that have moulded the stereotypical Irish personality. The legacy that Rockett uncovers is vast. In his book there are Irish films made by the Belgians, the French, the Germans and others made in Holland, Italy, Israel and Russia. By far the biggest selection of entries comes, not unsurprisingly from the USA, followed by Great Britain and Australia.
My own familiarity with the Australian-Irish experience and recent research in the area of representations of the Irish in Australia in feature and actuality films, have tended to shape my response to this book. I am a characteristic post-War baby. It came as no surprise that I knew few genuine, homemade Irish films before about 1980. Neither was I amazed to discover that my own experiences in Australian cinemas once weekly in the 1950s followed by an adolescent passion for old films on television especially in the 1960s, had provided me with a substantial foundation in Irish-American cinema. Indulgent images of Hollywood-Irish were once plentiful; Pat O'Brien, Barry Fitzgerald, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Bing Crosby as an oleaginous Father O'Malley and James Cagney as the perky Irish-(Jewish?)-American composer, George M Cohan. Like many of my contemporaries, and with Dwyer and Ryan blood in my veins, I warmed to these characters and to re-runs of Darby O'Gill and the little people (1959). By age twenty I had seen Going my way (1944) and the Bells of St Mary's (1945) many times. But it was a bland diet of Irishness. I cannot recall a real Irish cinema making any obvious progress in Australian theatres before My left foot (1989), two Oscars helping its conspicuousness. Later there were new Irish-American films like The secret of Roan Inish (1994) and Michael Collins (1995). The potency of these recent productions is clear enough and they draw their strength from characteristic traits of Irish film: Celtic myth, historical foreshortening in reclaiming heroes, religious and political differences, British occupation and panoramas of lush green. They are things that dally in the imagination of the Irish wherever they go and which help the non-Irish to fix a few coordinates in a landscape of homesick reverie and feisty indignation. This new Irish cinema is not bland, as this filmography recognises.
Little space has been given to the introductory formalities that preface the Irish filmography and little time to creating broad international and national contexts or clarifying the difficult job of drawing lines amongst films that have been judged eligible for inclusion. I would have appreciated a longer introductory essay, although this is probably a churlish request given the encyclopaedic nature of the book and also the size of the listing task that Rockett has undertaken and completed. `Almost two thousand entries', he tells us, rather vaguely, in the two-page introduction, though each entry has not been numbered. Rockett includes short narrative films, especially in the Irish section, as well as those of feature length, and segregates the latter. He partitions his work into chronological lists of the outputs of national production. Both of these things militate against anything other than index references to page numbers. There are five indices gathered together at the end and these make up over one third of the book. It is possible to search in the following areas: personal name index, corporate name index, composer and songwriter index, literary and dramatic index and a film title index. The personal name index takes up 235 of 296 pages of indices. The book has 757 large format, double column pages with small but manageable print.
At the front of each national list, film titles are given in a chronological table, except where this would be superfluous. Holland and Israel, for example, are represented by a single film. By my count there are forty eight in the Australian and eight in the Canadian list. Both the index at the front of the Canadian section and the titles listed in the text include variations of title from different releases. The 1937 Canadian film Fury and the woman is also listed under its working title, Vengeance of the forest , and its release title for Great Britain, Lucky Corrigan . However, Tony Richardson's awful Ned Kelly (1971) - the year of Ryan's Daughter - is not cross-referenced in the Australian section even though it was shot in Australia, included numerous Australian actors and is in the mould of the most popular subject for Australian films from the earliest years. It is included in the list for Great Britain where Chips Rafferty's (and Ealing Studios Ltd's) Eureka Stockade (1949), released as Massacre Hill in the US, can also be found.
So, an examination of some Australian entries might reveal the various criteria for selection and inclusion in the book, as well as revealing the cultural effects of the Irish diaspora and the effect of Irish immigration in various countries, particularly in Australia and the USA, which took the bulk of those who, in the Australian poet Henry Lawson's words, `came or were sent'. For Australia, the results of crises in Ireland helped to consolidate a collective Irish-Australian view. The first of these was the transportation of political prisoners, together with their memories and grievances, over a period of about seventy years from the 1780s to the 1860s. The second was the dispersal of the poor after the great famine of the 1840s; for many a forced evacuation. After the arrival of Archbishop Moran in 1884, these events were appropriated by the Church which constructed Australian-Irish history as an extension of Catholic persecution. While this was certainly a part of the story, and it is the particular spin that Australians have been taught in the past, it tends to simplify what actually happened. Irish Protestant rebels transported for their part in the various rebellions, being difficult to accommodate in the desired picture, have often been ignored. But it is the Catholic interpretation of Australia's history that gives rise to most of the film stereotypes.
The first film in the Australian list is The story of the Kelly gang from 1906, often touted as the world's first feature-length narrative fiction film.The roots of the Kelly revolt as an Irish-inspired, Catholic, republican insurrection have recently been explored by Ian Jones in a new biography of Ned Kelly. Ned is Australia's most filmed outlaw, cropping up regularly from 1906, in the 1920s and 30s and as recently as 1980 (television miniseries, The last outlaw ). The 1906 Filmography entry examines, usefully and briefly, current disagreements about the provenance of the 1906 production. It also includes proof reading errors. Constable Lonigan, who was killed in the Stringybark Creek massacre, is given as `Lonergan' who, in a comic sequence, shoots at `cuckatoes' not cockatoos. Even if these spellings have been encountered in writings about the film they deserve a ( sic ), at least. Much of the information for this complex entry is drawn from the meticulous research of Australian scholars, such as Ina Bertrand and Chris Long, who have assisted the editor. It seems odd, given the effort that has gone into constructing the entry, that it fails to include Richardson's Ned Kelly (the one with Mick Jagger as the outlaw) in the list of other Kelly films offered towards the end of the entry. Some inadequacies of the introductory essay are off-set by the care taken to explain the local historical circumstances surrounding the Kelly or the Eureka risings; essential explanations for an international readership.
It is a pity that the international Australian vaudeville star Florrie Forde, born Florrie Flanagan, is so little known in Australia's cultural history that she is invisible in the entry on the 1914 film It's a long way to Tipperary . She made the song famous in the UK in live performances and on sound recordings in Australia, and the film is based on the story that unfolds in Florrie's song. She too represents a part of a larger picture of the Irish in Australia that has not been well researched. But there can be no doubt about the Tipperary film being included.
The church and the woman (1917), a lost melodrama made by Raymond Longford and Lottie Lyell has sectarian credentials. Lottie plays the part of Eileen Shannon, who suffers a variety of traumas including falling in love with a Protestant, Dr Sidney Burton. Burton's first name is given in the Filmography as `Sidney' or `Sydney' indiscriminately. It is a common trap for the unwary, especially those who become distracted by the name of the city whilst dealing with things Australian.
The most intense and racially pure indulgence of rural Australian Irishry occurs in Around the boree log (1925), in which a priest recollects a variety of incidents from the past which are captured in poems he has written. (`Boree' is the weeping myall, a tree that produces good quality firewood.) His readings bring the past to life in a series of flashbacks. The priest is `John O'Brien', in reality father P J Hartigan who had written with considerable energy and humour about parish life in central and southern New South Wales from the late 1800s. There is no doubt about the indebtedness to Ireland of Around the boree log or the depth of sentiment and sympathy projected and elicited by the film.
Other inclusions are less obvious. The kid stakes (1927) is a film set in inner suburban Sydney and based on Syd Nichols' comic strip larrikin Fatty Finn. Fatty's name (Finn) might have been grounds enough for this film to make it into an Irish filmography, although that seems a rather tenuous argument. An intertitle explains that he was called `Fatty' because he wasn't fat; a parody of larrikin Irish-Australian logic, perhaps? Constable Claffey, who has a prominent role, adds to the Irish flavour even though he is drawn largely from contemporary American cinema and might be equally at home in the Bronx or Woolloomooloo (where some of the film was shot). The Murphy the cop series of films (USA 1913/1914) might have provided inspiration, but you don't have to look far for models. A production still from one of these Murphy films is included in Still Irish a companion volume of illustration that adds significantly to the encyclopaedic entries of the Filmography. The stills have been selected and organized by Kevin Rockett and (coincidentally) Eugene Finn, almost certainly a distant relative of "Fatty". There is goat racing in The kid stakes , linking it, perhaps, to an Irish enthusiasm for races and gambling. The goat carts smack of pint-sized versions of what might be pulled by donkeys in Connemara. Yes, I understand why The kid stakes should be there.
To list films like Libido (1973), a suite of four short films, where one part, The priest , explores repression and the priesthood seems spurious even when the priest is a Father Stephen Burn. I have a similar difficulty with Newsfront (1978) where Bill Hunter plays Len Maguire (not Patrick, or Daniel or Michael), a characteristic Catholic, trade-unionised, Labor Party-supporting newsreel cameraman. It is drawing a rather long bow to make a strong claim for the Irishness of both of these films. In many respects Len Maguire is the eponymous Australian. And there are many other candidates in Australian films who might mark the films in which they appear as Irish on similar grounds. Molly the street musician in Harmony Row (1933), Terry Regan in Always another dawn (1947), `Baldy' Muldoon in The Kangaroo Kid (1950), Eileen and Daniel in the fanciful bio-pic, about the life of Australian pianist Eileen Joyce, Wherever she goes (1951), and even Dell Maguire in Kangaroo (1952) might all qualify, but these films have not been included. It is a matter of degree and marking the boundary will always be difficult.
Kangaroo is included in the US list in much the same way that Richardson's Ned Kelly is amongst the films from Great Britain. It is not indexed amongst the Australian entries. Maureen O'Hara co-stars with Australian Chips Rafferty and the film was shot on location in South Australia with some sequences filmed in Sydney. It is a transported western, owing more to the USA than it does to Australia or to Ireland.
In fact, like many American films of the twenties to the fifties, Kangaroo's Irishness is incidental. Similarly, Little Nellie Kelly (1940) is an American family history with music, smaltz and a faint whiff of Guinness, brewed, of course, in the USA. So often the Irish settings, or names, or situations are a part of the backdrop rather than a deep-seated, pressing, inescapable Irishness that lingers near the footlights. Even the brilliantly photographed, classic British film Odd man out (1947), like a brooding Shakespearean tragedy, works itself out in the dynamics of personal emotion and relationship rather than finding some focus in an ideology. The forces of law are the same relentless pursuers of a thousand movies and, as Rockett and Finn explain in their Still Irish caption, the film does little to explore the politics of the British in Ireland. The robbery gone wrong becomes a catalyst for a hopeless attempt at escape in which supposedly partisan forces prove to be less black and white in their allegiances than might be expected. It is not difficult to extract many of the mainstream Irish concerns from In the name of the father (1993) where the context created by the whole episode of the `Guildford Four' is essential and it seems more particularly Irish and in one sense, less universal. The English settings are no distraction: the film is palpably Irish.
`Slice of life' films like The Commitments (1991) - internationally popular, its soundtrack CD selling well and creating something of a cult status for the film - also exude an atmosphere that is unmistakably Irish. In the same year Hear my song (1991) quickly came and went, leaving its soundtrack CD in most record shops. Poles apart as they are, it would be interesting to bring both films back now that the Riverdance phenomenon is firmly established. Perhaps it speaks for the growing sophistication of the Irish industry, even when it is propped up with British or American money, that there is such diversity in these excursions into a broadly musical genre. Their motivation seems genuinely Irish. The international interest that they have attracted also seems genuine and Ireland is being taken to a constituency that is broader than ever before.
This Filmography is timely. But there are some vexing questions implied, if not actually raised, in this brief examination. Issues of consistency in the identification of Irish materials are crucial. Setting the more difficult questions aside, it is useful to briefly sketch the ways in which the Irish filmography and Still Irish are successful. They provide compelling evidence of dispersal of the Irish people, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Irish in Australia, like their relatives in USA, have nurtured a powerful race memory and an eagerness to revisit old battles or to see paradigms of past encounters in contemporary events that sustain the blood-bonds, express old grievances and indulge that peculiar Irish nostalgia. It was a wistful yearning for an irrecoverable simplicity, a grieving for a mythical Ireland that was home, once. These qualities lurk just below the surface, informing the recent Irish television success Ballykissangel.
The strong race memories that persisted, undiluted, in Australia and the USA until the 1950s are in evidence in the majority of Irish-related films up to that time, along with a sentimental engagement with colleens, jaunting carts and peat fires. This is especially true in the US cinema industry that colonized the world, and in films like Little Nellie Kelly with its jazzed up transformation of the song, Pretty girl milking her cow.
The Irish filmography and Still Irish are excellent, useful additions to the film bookshelf. The glitches that have attracted my attention are relatively minor when the books' real achievements are considered. The Filmography brings together in one comprehensive subject listing much of the international output of Irish-related narrative feature film in the last hundred years. It was a logical and worthwhile project for an Irish publisher. For countries like Australia this cinema, charged as it is with qualities traditionally associated with the Irish, is linked to the mainstream of its own cultural, political and social history. This is especially true of the tendency to create national hagiographies, to construct an heroic past and to stimulate distinctive mythologies. Ned Kelly's elevation as a national symbol has been facilitated by writers, songwriters and painters, as well as by filmmakers: models from the past and recollections of important deeds have played their part in his creation. And the craving for heroes and heroic actions and their depiction, has not diminished. Did Michael Collins really penetrate the security of the dreaded Dublin Castle in order to pillage its records? Where does he stand in a pantheon that includes the subject of a huge 19th century elevation in literature and singing of the unfortunate, and perhaps bold, Robert Emmet? Times have changed and the bland Hollywood `Paddy' has faded with the ambling sentimentality that gave him birth. An appetite for significant, great men and women and for the hymning of their achievements has not changed much in one hundred years.
It remains to be seen how widely the book will be distributed. A stated aim in the Filmography's introduction is to raise awareness of the range of films made about the Irish. It will do this if it is well marketed and easy to acquire. This is clearly an essential reference for libraries and will be sought by film buffs. I hope it is widely promoted and that the small Irish publishing house makes a deal with an international distributor to ensure that it is seen in bookshops outside Ireland.
Jeff Brownrigg, Australia's National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra.
Reference list:
Jones, Ian. Ned Kelly:a short life. Melbourne: Lothian Books, 1995.
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