A Terrible Beauty

The IRA in Northern Ireland during the last world war was in a strange boat.

Since, as is said in the Near East, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," there was naturally a certain positive attitude towards Nazi Germany. (You can find this social dynamic explicated by Fritz Heider, the German psychologist, if you like.) Well, the Nazis are mentioned here, and there is a broadcast by Lord Haw Haw, but other than that this is a story of the IRA against the British establishment in Northern Ireland.

What a tangled web they wove. And what a cast to be caught up in it. Robert Mitchum sounds passably Irish, and looks it too. His hair is long and curly and it gives him a poetic look. (How many times did he play an Irishman? I'm beginning to lose count.) Anne Heywood looks just fine but occasionally sounds as if she's reading from cue cards. The rest of the cast give first-rate performances: Richard Harris, Dan O'Herlihy, and Cyril Cusack especially. O'Herlihy is, I think, an underrated actor. Here he does his "Odd Man Out" number, only he's a good deal more ambitious here than there. He had considerable range: distant and deceitful in "Home Before Dark," compassionate and humanistic in "Fail-Safe." Likewise Cyril Cusack, who has a pretty interesting last name. It's a common enough name in Ireland, but it was English before that, and before that it was brought from France by the Normans, to whom it was a location name (one who lived in Cotius's place). It's also a Ukranian name meaning "cossack." Cyril Cusack is an exceptional performer. He was one of many excellent things about, "The Day of the Jackal," in which he gave his finest performance, brief though it was.

Alas -- fascinating political situation, wonderful cast -- great potential wasted on a narrative that should have been polished. It isn't that they don't have the ethnographic details right, because they do. Mitchum is the "O'Neill boy," although he's 35. He'll remain a "boy" until he's married, an event which takes place late it life in traditional Irish villages. (That's their form of birth control.) The Irish also practiced primogeniture, meaning that the oldest son gets the farm, skimpy as it is in this case, so poor Mitchum will have to get out on his own. And the script captures some of the ways the Irish tend to play with words. When Mitchum informs on the IRA inside the police station, the Sargent tells him that his friends are waiting outside to kill him, and Mitchum replies, "I think I'll go home by the back way, pendin' the coolin' of their ardor." (There's a hilarious scene in "Angela's Ashes" in which a teacher pities a young boy because "you're so poor you haven't a shoe to your foot.")

But, the narrative is not taut. The characters and their motives are not clearly drawn, except in the way that cartoons are drawn. Not because of a deliberate attempt at ambiguity but through carelessness. Mitchum is entirely too casual when he joins the IRA, as if accepting a drink from a friend at the bar. And he informs on them with equal aplomb. O'Herlihy's character is one-dimensional, a glory-hungry IRA commandant who is also the jealous, rejected lover of Mitchum's girl. If the script is weak, so is Tay Garnett's direction. Toward the end, O'Herlihy mistakenly shoots a young boy. No one bothered to include a shot of the boy falling from his bicycle.

Then O'Herlihy turns and runs away into the rain, and we never find out what happens afterward, leaving not just a loose thread hanging but a veritable hawser. Next, we get a quick change of scene to Mitchum and his girl sailing away on a ferry into the sunset.

Ho hum. What a waste.

You know what that means, two characters such as those one on a shooting, as Robert Mitchum with Stanley Baker during Bob Aldrich's THE ANGRY HILLS; I mean booze is never far from the "companionship" that may rise between the likes of Mitchum, Harris and Baker, so notorious heavy drinkers. And they were not the only ones.....So this Tay Garnet's film, as several from this same director, offer some John Ford's accents, elements: Irish, men's atmosphere, saloon fist fights. And there were not so many movies speaking if iRA in those days, the sixties decade. Good film but not my favourite from POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE director.

The Night Fighters makes use of Robert Mitchum's marvelous gift for speech mimicry as he adopts and Irish brogue for a film set in Northern Ireland in 1941. The brogue would be put to better use later on in a far better film, Ryan's Daughter.

To put in historical context, France has fallen and the British are waging war without allies on the continent for a year now. The Germans contact elements of the old Irish Republican Army and they're looking for a rising like Easter of 1916 that will drain British troops to defend the country and free the six counties who were left behind.

So the local commandant Dan O'Herlihy raises such a force in his local area and recruits buddies Robert Mitchum and Richard Harris for the group. They do a raid and one of their number is killed and Mitchum and Harris are fugitives. All the worse because as history records the Nazis never did attempt an invasion of Great Britain, they went to the Soviet Union instead.

Mitchum and Harris are a pair who would rather raise a tankard of beer than a country see this was for nothing. That leads to all kinds of complications down the road.

I'm not sure what the point to The Night Fighters really was. The film ending was anti-climatic to say the least. I will say that Mitchum's character had a lot of Victor McLaglen's Gypo Nolan from The Informer in him. The Night Fighters never reaches to the dramatic heights that the John Ford classic did.

In fact The Night Fighters is known primarily for the fact that after hours Robert Mitchum got into a pub brawl with some of the locals and he came out on top. Many different versions of the story got into the media around the world, but I suggest you read Lee Server's meticulously researched and delightfully written biography of Mitchum to get the real story. I can't repeat it here due to the language.

Mitchum fans might like The Night Fighters, but it will never be at the top of his best screen performances.

During WWII in a small Irish town, Dermot O'Neill (Robert Mitchum) is recruited into the IRA along with other locals including Sean Reilly (Richard Harris). He starts by stealing guns from a British armoury, but the next mission however to destroy a power station results in several deaths and Reilly is injured and the two have to go on the run. O'Neill remains patriotic but questions the value of what they are doing and particularly the principles that drive them when Reilly is captured and high and mighty and cowardly leader Don McGinnis (Dan O'Herlihy - v. Good) won't risk the group to rescue Reilly. In addition, when McGinnis threatens to attack the 'traitorous' Irish police, O'Neill says he'll report them and of course they turn against him.

The film partly considers the rights and wrongs of the campaign and its collaboration with the Nazis, but mostly it considers the difficulties faced balancing loyalties to Ireland vs loyalty to family and friends. Mitchum is terrific here and works particularly well with Harris - one can only speculate as to how much Irish Whiskey got drunk on this set. There is also tremendous support from stalwarts like Cyril Cusack and Niall MacGinnis. It all adds up to an enjoyable, witty and occasionally moving tale, just very occasionally straying into 'top of the morning to you' cliche.

Although it wasn't my genre of preference, I loved watching The Night Fighters. Cute guys, cute accents; what else is there? Sure, there are some rebellious plots and shootings, but is anyone really paying attention to them? I was much more focused on Robert Mitchum, Dan O'Herlihy, and relative newcomer to the screen Richard Harris.

Dan is the leader of the IRA, but with his crippled foot, he isn't ever able to participate in their activities. He feels ashamed of it, and he feels he has to take drastic action to make up for it: joining the Nazi party. He thinks the IRA can just use the Nazis to help further their purpose, and when they have no further need of them, they can part ways. But some feel that's not a realistic approach. When Bob joins the rebellious group, does he do more than drink beer and make the girls swoon? He just might have some interesting ideas to contribute.

Ladies, if you like Irish accents and cute guys, go ahead and suggest this movie for your next date night. Your fellow will like the plots and violence, and you'll be kept pretty happy too. Next up, rent Ryan's Daughter for more of Bob Mitchum's adorable accent!