Révolte à Dublin

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.

If you like Ireland, Irish history & literature, the traditions of the Irish people & the ambiguous creation of the Irish nation -- what's not to like about this movie? Sure, now, it's more John Ford than Sean O'Casey. But what would you be expectin from John Ford at the height of his creative spirit -- four years before he filmed "Grapes of Wrath"? Almost everyone in this movie plays their part with pungent efficiency. It's old-fashioned acting of the best sort. As movie, this is much more cinema of ideas, of belief & revolution, of theater, of language & gesture & non-verbal communication -- than our contemporary cinema of special effects and technicolor sensations. This movie is political entertainment of a very fine order; with as much said by the words as by what is shown. But how many people alive now can relate to it with the potency it must of had back in the 1930s?

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.

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.

THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS, represents the director's anti-imperialist stance against the ruling British in Ireland. Although political in tone, both films have been filtered through the classical Hollywood consciousness; they refer as much to American conflicts (e.g. the Civil War) as Irish conflicts, with a protagonist struggling for freedom against the colonial power, as well as against pro-colonial forces within his own people. THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS stars Barbara Stanwyck; much of the action has been rewritten from a woman's film perspective, showing her struggling to survive in a world dominated by rebellion, in which her husband (Preston Foster) is committed to the cause of freedom - so much so, in fact, that he neglects her. But Ford is too clever to make any judgment; although sympathizing with Stanwyck's character, he makes it clear that her husband has to fight on so as to preserve his own integrity, as well as that of his own country. THE INFORMER and THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS are both packed with Abbey Theatre actors, including Barry Fitzgerald, Arthur Shields (who were both Protestant, by the way, rather than Catholic as portrayed in the film) and more; they provide local color, as well as vivid illustration of how ordinary people coped with the experience of rebellion. Sometimes we wonder whether they have been cast to show off their Oirishness - in other words, conform to Hollywood stereotypes of the Irish character (garrulous, full of songs and fond of drinking). This is especially true of Fitzgerald's Fluther Good, who seems to have little involvement in the film's main plot, yet nonetheless has the chance to show off his (non-existent) pugilistic abilities. Nonetheless the film still packs a punch, despite its short running-time.