L'aratro e le stelle

Sean O'Casey's drama of the Easter Rising doesn't survive its transformation to the screen. Director John Ford was reputed to be so angry over front office interference on his passion project that he walked off and never returned.

While Joe August's lighting and the serio-comic performance of Barry Fitgerald are wonders to behold - he edged basically the same character a little more to the clown for The Quiet Man - something has gone desperately wrong with the movement between the interior scenes, where the play takes place and the exterior, where it's opened up. Given that Ford was working with his pet screenwriter Dudley Nichols, and a couple of titles explain what is going on, it looks like butchery to me. I'd guess the studio heads were concerned about losing the British market. As if they had ever expected this to play big in Blighty.

Barbara Stanwyck is also a problem here. While visually she is perfect, she can't sling the lingo, and her occasional attempts to do an Irish accent are pathetic. It's particularly awkward when the scene shifts from her to the Abbey Players.

THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS is one of the darker chapters in John Ford's sound film career. A "dream" project for the director, it instead became a debacle very early on in its tumultuous production history.

Among other things: RKO wouldn't import the full cast of the stage version, leading Ford to cast Preston Foster and Barbara Stanwyck in roles which arguably needed to go to Irish nationals more familiar with everything from the complex subject matter to the accents they would use. The producers misunderstood the story completely, and not only insisted on re-shooting sequences explaining the marriage of Stanwyck and Foster's characters (with a different director), but inserted newsreel footage and atrocious documentary-style narration. Contrary to another comment here, Ford had _nothing_ to do with the insertion of the archival footage... which is actually from the _wrong_ battle: it's from 1921, not the Easter Rebellion of 1916 described in the play/film.

Ford's generally deft handling of comic and dramatic elements collapses here into a confusing mess, in large part because Ford's depression over the project led him into an alcoholic bender during production.

Possibly Ford's worst sound film, which can be filed next to his other unfortunate duds such as THE WORLD MOVES ON and WHEN WILLIE COMES MARCHING HOME.

John Ford is today primarily thought of as the director of Westerns, but these do not constitute the whole of his output. He was of Irish descent- his original name was John Feeney- and several of his films, including "The Plough and the Stars", reflect his interest in the affairs of his ancestral homeland. (Others include "The Informer", "The Quiet Man" and "The Rising of the Moon"; he was originally slated to direct "Young Cassidy" but had to withdraw owing to illness about three weeks into filming, and was replaced by Jack Cardiff, who was credited as director).

"The Plough and the Stars" is based on the play of the same name by Seán O'Casey. It is set against the background of the Easter Rising of 1916 when Irish Nationalists staged a rebellion against British rule in Ireland. (The title is derived from the "Starry Plough flag", a banner used by the nationalist movement). The central characters are Jack and Nora Clitheroe, a married couple who run a boarding house in Dublin. Jack is secretly a member of a nationalist militia, the Irish Citizen Army, and obeys their call when the Rising breaks out. Nora, however, is horrified; she loves Jack, and cannot bear the idea that he might be killed, even if he is fighting for a cause that he believes in. (She herself has always tried to keep aloof from politics).

Some reviewers on this board have been highly critical of Nora for not standing by her man and not standing by her country, but I feel that such reviewers miss the point of what O'Casey was trying to do. Although he was himself a supporter of the nationalist cause and had been a member of the ICA, he was not trying to write a narrowly partisan, propagandist play. He was well aware of the complexities of the political situation and of the fact that not everybody in the Ireland of 1916 had supported the Rising. In that year many Irishmen were in the British Army fighting in the First World War against Germany. (All of them volunteers- conscription was never applied in Ireland, unlike mainland Britain). Many of these men were Irish Unionists who supported the Union with Britain, but many were nationalists who nevertheless believed in the justice of the Allied cause and who believed that the best way to achieve Home Rule was to work with the British rather than against them. There were also many like Nora who held no strong political views but who recoiled from violence and from the possibility that their loved ones might die in a pointless uprising. O'Casey realised that any play about the Rising, if it were to be honest, needed to take account of all these viewpoints.

Ford wanted to make the film with the Irish cast who had appeared in the original production of the play at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. The studio RKO, however, insisted on using established American stars for the two leading roles in order to boost the film's box-office appeal, so Barbara Stanwyck and Preston Foster were cast as Nora and Jack. RKO also wanted to make changes to the plot in order to tone down O'Casey's left-wing views. (These views had made the play controversial in Ireland itself; when it was first performed in 1926 it led to a riot when conservative, middle-class nationalists in the audience took offence). His clashes with the studio led to Ford walking away and disowning the project, complaining that the studio had ruined the whole thing. The film was completed by another director, although Ford retained the directing credit. (There was no Alan Smithee pseudonym available in 1936).

Stanwyck's performance has been criticised, but although her Irish accent leaves much to be desired, she puts her lines across clearly and conveys the pathos of Nora's position. I didn't care much for Foster, however; his accent is no better and he often seems difficult to understand. The rest of the cast are something of a mixed bag, and I couldn't see the point of Barry Fitzgerald's Fluther Good, a drunken stage Irishman, unless it was to provide some sort of comic relief. It is a long time since I last saw O'Casey's play, but I remember it as a powerful piece of drama. We cannot know what Ford's film would have been like had the studio given him a free hand, but I suspect it would have been better than the film we actually have. 5/10.

Made as a follow up to the hugely successful THE INFORMER, John Ford's much maligned screen version of THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS has long been regarded as one of his worst films.

I finally saw this film tonight, thanks to the wonderful Talking Pictures TV Channnel here in England.

My Iriish-born father loathed this film because he said it was a travesty of O'Casey's play and just a Hollywood fiction of the Easter uprising.

Well I read all the reviews here expecting the worst.

But, I was amazed to watch a print of this film that bore NO relation to that described in the reviews posted here! There was no newsreel footage interpolated, no unfortunate added narration whatsoever and no extra footage by other directors to explain the marriage of Stanwyck & Foster's marriage! What gives? What I saw was obviously a genuine John Ford film, beautifully directed and photographed, with many of his trademark camera set ups, close ups and scene compositions. His usual flair for narrative and the many subtle visual trademarks did not indicate a hatchet job by RKO.

The whole thing had an understated poetic quality and the pace and fluidity were striking.

So what was I looking at? A pre-release print that had somehow survived in the UK but not in the RKO archives in LA? It was certainly no turkey and even Stanwyck impressed me - her lack of accent did not matter, because Ford (in this print at least) let her face do all the acting for her. And she was great! Barry Fitzgerald was clearly doing a warm up for his role in THE QUIET MAN, but the remaining Abbey Players were all fine and I believe acted large portions of O'Casey's dialogue intact. I do not have a copy of the play to make a comparison but will seek it out.

Una O'Connor showed what a fine dramatic actress she was in Ireland before she found fame in Hollywood. Even Preston Foster demonstrated an impressive restraint and was highly impressive.

Ford did not have Max Steiner for this film (as he had on THE INFORMER and THE LOST PATROL) but Roy Webb did a fine job with a highly dramatic and vivid music score throughout.

But what of the source print? Are there really two extant versions of this film? If so, I think I watched the long lost "Director's Cut" tonight! How exciting!

The harnessing of crudely stereotypical Irish characters to the tale of the Easter uprising of 1916 makes for forgettable viewing. It departed so drastically from director John Ford's vision that he stormed off the set, leaving his assistant directors to finish the film. Barbara Stanwyck tries her best, but her task is hopeless as she's given nothing to do other than beg rebel husband Preston Foster to lay down his arms.