The Rising of the Moon

This trio of short stories, narrated by Tyrone Power, and directed by John Ford, is a delight to the eye and ear of the lovers of the Irish theater and story telling style. Each of the three stories is varied in its style and content. The title story, "The Rising of the Moon," is a patriotic drama taken from Lady Augusta Gregory's 1907 play of the same name. It accounts for a time in Irish history prior to independence from Britain. The small monologues between the hard-working Irish Catholic policeman (played by Ward Bond, if memory serves,) and his loyal wife are wonderful. "The Magesty of the Law" plays to the typical Irish satirical humor and warmth of spirit and "A Mintutes' Wait" is just wonderful, raucous Irish humor at its best. Each story is replete with Irish and Irish-American film and theater stars of that period who so often populate John Ford's films. Many are supreme character actors we know we have seen somewhere before... Truly a film style and an era long gone. Thank you, John Ford.

.A movie made of sketches.which is pretty rare in the English/Irish films,except for the horror flicks ,and in Ford's filmography;French (Duvivier) and Italians (Risi) are more familiar to that kind of stuff.

Ford's film has one great quality:his shorts become better and better.

I must confess I found the first segment pretty boring:unlike the two others ,it does not have an "universal" appeal .It is very talky and only the splendid Irish landscapes (it was filmed on location,Tyrone Power told us so in his presentation of the film)redeem it a little.

Things go much better with the second segment:one minute's wait in a tiny railway station which actually will last a very looong time.Several miniplots intermix (a mature couple going to a wedding ,a ghost story ,marriageable son and daughter ,a hockey team whose bus has broken down,a she-goat,lobsters ,and more ) and the very last picture is worthy of a Tex Avery cartoon. "The quiet man" in miniature.

Ford saved the best for the last:mainly during the first half ,he has a very fine way to blend tragedy (an Irish rebel will be hanged by the English ) and comedy (those nuns are wearing high heels!).A positive "remake" of "the informer" this segment is witty,sometimes hilarious,and even suspenseful.It ends of course with the traditional song "rising of the moon" a policeman used to sing although he found it a bit subversive.

This movie is to Ford what the album "Irish Heartbeat " is to singer Van Morrison :a work of love for his homeland.

The Rising of the Moon (1957), directed by John Ford, is actually three short films about Ireland.

The first is "The Majesty of the Law," from a story by Frank O'Connor. O'Connor was an outstanding author, and the story itslef is worth reading. Ford keeps O'Connor's concept, but adds many embellishments. I wasn't impressed by these additions, but I was impressed by Ford's direction, which was outstanding in all three segments.

The second story, "A Minute's Wait," is by a less-known Irish writer, Michael J. McHugh. It's a fairly repetitious piece about a train that, for many reasons, never quite leaves the small station where it has stopped. It's the comic relief film. An English colonel and his wife are on the train, and they are presented as perfect stereotypes. At one point a sports team arrives, with great fanfare. The colonel tells his wife that it's probably the local cricket team. Of course, it's actually a victorious team that competes in the Irish sport of hurling. One reason not to fast-forward is to listen to the most bizarrely worded marriage proposal that you'll ever hear.

The third segment is adapted from Lady Augusta Gregory's play, "The Rising of the Moon." Lady Gregory was an English aristocrat who lived in Ireland, and adopted the Irish revolutionary cause as her own. She was the founder of he famous Abbey Theatre, which still exists today.

This segment has two serious plots. One is obvious--an Irish revolutionary is about to be executed. The other is less obvious but, in my opinion, it's the more important plot. It involves an Irish Constabulary sergeant and his wife. We see them first at the very beginning of the story, and again at the very end.

We saw this movie on the small screen, where it worked well. It's uneven, and not a masterpiece, but it's worth seeing. It has an anemic IMDb rating of 6.8. I think it's much better than that.

When John Ford set out to make what was to turn out to be his last completed Irish film he had high hopes of using Tyrone Power, Maureen O'Hara, and Barry Fitzgerald to star in each of the stories that make up the trilogy in The Rising Of The Moon. Unfortunately all three of them had prior commitments though I suspect in the case of O'Hara she was not getting along with Ford at the time. Read her memoirs to find out about their odd relationship.

However he did get Tyrone Power to appear and do narratives for the three stories that were filmed. The stories certainly are a rich mixture of Irish fiction from the first quarter of the last century. If you recognize the players they are from the famous Abbey Theater Company of Dublin and if you saw The Quiet Man you'll pick out many a face and voice from the cast of characters there.

The first story is the least of the three, in His Majesty The Law a police inspector played by Cyril Cusack has a distasteful duty to perform in serving a warrant on Noel Purcell, a rather proud gentleman who cold cocked a man who sold him some bad home made moonshine.

The second is entitled A Minute's Wait concerns a train bound into some country region of Ireland that is continually being held for a minute's wait while all sorts of bizarre passengers and freight are loaded on to the train. While this is going on the passengers are having one really good time in the station pub. You wouldn't think that in Ireland a train station wouldn't have a pub? Everyone just expects all these things as part of the system except for a married English couple who are the ones constantly downgraded from what passes for first class accommodations on this Irish railway. It's all quite whimsical and amusing.

The last story 1921 is set during the rebellion that year and it involves the escape of a known IRA man minutes from his date with the hangman. The escape is perpetrated by a group of Irish players not unlike the Abbey Theater. Although the audience knows well who the escapee is through his disguise that's half the fun in seeing that the occupying Black and Tan force is so clueless to what's going on around them. Donal Donnelly plays the escapee Sean Curran, a role that was intended for Tyrone Power had he been able to do it. Power was probably too old for the part in any event and the younger Donnelly was a better fit.

Yet the lack of marquee names is the reason that this film is not better known. I'm sure now that it has appeared on TCM it will be broadcast with The Quiet Man on St. Patrick's Day.

At least I hope so.

"The Rising of the Moon" is a very obscure Ford movie, the kind of picture Ford would say merely "a job of work". In other words, it is not to be taken seriously. I watched it the other night, wondering to find out why it is so overlooked among Ford's pictures. It is basically a disjointed, yet reflective poem on Ireland in a by-gone era that works if you are a hardcore Ford fanatic. It is based on three vignettes that are introduced by Tyrone Power. They are called "A minutes Wait", "The Majesty of the Law", and "Rising of the Moon" also known as "1921". It is not a great movie and certainly nowhere near the kind of movie it often evokes, the beautiful "The Quiet Man", but there are some nice and enjoyable moments, particularly in the vignette about the train that makes a stop for two hours instead of one minute.

This is only the hardcore Ford fans.