Quiet Man

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:17 am

Plot: Tall American Sean Thornton (John Wayne) arrives in Innisfree, a small, beautiful Irish village and meets Michaeleen Flynn (Barry Fitzgerald), who drives him into town. Something of a busybody, Michaeleen is very curious, and is delighted to find that Sean was born in Innisfree, and that he has come back to buy back his family home and settle there. Over the objections of “Squire” Will Danaher (Victor McLaglen), a huge firey man, Sean buys the cottage, called White O’Morning, from the Widow Tillane (Mildred Natwick), a wealthy woman who owns the adjoining property, and settles in.

Sean sees Will’s sister, Mary Kate Danaher (Maureen O’Hara) out in a field and is immediately struck by her. Sean finds her in his cottage, “being neighborly” by cleaning it for him, and he grabs her and kisses her. He sees her again at church. He approaches her as he would an American girl, but finds that the customs are different in Ireland, and that if he wants to court Mary Kate, he must do it according to quaint, old-fashioned rules, with the permission of her brother. Will’s objections to their courtship are overcome by Father Lonergan (Ward Bond) and others, who persuade Will that he must allow Mary Kate to marry in order to be able himself to marry the Widow Tillane. He grudgingly consents, and allows them to proceed under the eye of a chaperone, none other than Michaeleen, who reminds them that “The proprieties must be observed.” They drive off with Michaeleen, sitting on opposite sides of a wagon, but they get off the wagon and run away together, and as they are drenched by a sudden rainstorm, they cannot wait for “the proprieties” any longer, and they kiss.

At the wedding, Will finds that he has been tricked, and that the Widow Tillane does not want her acquiescence to marry him taken for granted. He is furious. He refuses to give Mary Kate her dowry or the fine furniture she inherited from her mother. Sean does not care, and cannot understand why it is important to Mary Kate. All he wants is her. But far from being reassured by this, Mary Kate is hurt. She feels that her things and her dowry are part of who she is and part of what she brings to the marriage, and that if Sean cared about her he would fight for them. They sleep apart.

The next morning, their friends arrive with the furniture. They have “persuaded” Will to give it to her. But he still won’t give her the dowry. Although they love each other deeply, Sean and Mary Kate cannot resolve that problem. Mary Kate is ashamed of herself and ashamed of Sean, and goes to the train station, planning to leave him. He follows her and drags her back to a confrontation with Will, telling Will that if he will not pay the dowry, he must take her back. Will gives them the money, and together, they burn it. Mary Kate smiles with delight and tells Sean she will go home and prepare supper for him.

Will and Sean then enter into an epic fistfight, that takes them all the way through the town, as crowds gather to watch, cheer, and bet on the outcome. Finally, bruised, drunk, and happy, they arrive at White O’Morning for supper, Will bawling happily, “Bless all in this house.”

Discussion: Some critics have claimed that this is an anti-feminist movie, but that is a very superficial perspective. The furniture and money are important to Mary Kate because she wants to enter the relationship as an equal. She believes that without them she will be to Sean what she was in Will’s house, just someone to do the work. She says, “Until I’ve got my dowry safe about me, I’m no married woman. I’m the servant I’ve always been, without anything of my own!” But it is just as important to Sean to let her know that what he cares about is his love for her, and that alone is enough to make her an equal partner. For this reason, burning the money, which might otherwise seem foolishly wasteful, was a way for them to each win a victory.

Sean also has to conquer his fear of fighting, which requires him to open up emotionally. As “Trouper Thorn,” a professional boxer in the U.S., he accidentally killed an opponent in the ring. This left him afraid to let go. In the fights with Will and Mary Kate he learns that he can let go physically and emotionally and strengthen his relationships. Notice how Sean and Mary Kate seem to affect even the weather as they fall in love. Gusty winds and torrential rain reflect the emotions they are feeling for each other.

Questions for Kids:

· Sean and Mary Kate loved each other very much, but had a hard time understanding each other. Why was Mary Kate’s dowry so important to her? How did Sean show he understood that?

· Why did they burn the money? Was that a good way to solve the problem of the dowry for both of them?

· How did Sean’s friends persuade Mary Kate’s brother to let Sean marry her? Was that fair?

· Why did Sean and Will like each other better after fighting each other?

Connections: One of the highlights of “E.T.” is the scene in which E.T. is in Eliot’s house alone, watching “The Quiet Man” on television. We see his connection to Eliot; E.T. sees Sean kiss Mary Kate as the wind rushes through the cottage, and Eliot, at school, grabs a classmate and gives her a kiss.

Maureen O’Hara, born in Ireland, was never more ravishing than here on her home ground, shot in magnificent technicolor. She and Wayne made four other films together, including “Rio Grande,” also directed by Ford. She also plays the mother in “Miracle on 34th Street” and “The Parent Trap.” This was quite a family affair. Reverend Cyril Playfair is played by character actor Arthur Shields, in real life the brother of Barry Fitzgerald (Michaeleen). Francis Ford, who plays the man who gets off his deathbed to watch the fight, is the older brother of director John Ford. Wayne’s four children and two of O’Hara’s brothers also appear in the movie.

Ford won an Oscar for Best Direction.

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The Miracle Worker

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:17 am

Today is the 142nd anniversary of the birth of one of the most extraordinary teachers in American history, Annie Sullivan, who gave a little blind and deaf girl the power of language. William Gibson, who wrote two plays about the teacher and her student, says that when people refer to “The Miracle Worker” as “the play about Helen Keller,” he replies, “If it was about her, it would be called ‘The Miracle Workee.'” Sullivan, herself visually impaired, was first in her class at the Perkins School for the Blind. When she went to work for the Keller family she was just 21 years old. And Keller, who was blind and deaf due to an illness when she was 19 months old. When Sullivan arrived, Keller was almost completely wild, without any ability to communicate or any understanding that communication beyond grabbing and hitting was possible.

Every family should watch the extraordinary film about what happened next, and read more about Keller, who, with Sullivan’s help, graduated from Radcliffe magna cum laude and became an author and a world figure.

Ann Bancroft and Patty Duke won Oscars for their performances as Sullivan and Keller, repeating their Broadway roles and Duke later played Sullivan in a made-for-television adaptation. In this scene, after months of teaching Keller to fingerspell words, Sullivan is finally able to show her that language will give her the ability to communicate, with a new world of relationships, feelings, and learning. No teacher ever bestowed a greater gift.

Monday After the Miracle is Gibson’s sequel to the play, and Keller’s own book is called The Story of My Life. There is a photobiography of Sullivan called Helen’s Eyes.

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Drama Family Issues

Edison, the Man

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:17 am

“Plot: The movie begins with a dinner in 1929 honoring the “”Golden Jubilee of Light,”” the anniversary of the invention of the electric light bulb. But the guest of honor has not yet left home. He is being interviewed by two high school students, telling them that success is ninety-nine percent perspiration and one percent inspiration, and that the most valuable thing in the world is time, because all the money in the world won’t buy one minute of it.

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Based on a true story Biography

Life or Something Like It

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:17 am

It’s been months since we have had a good old-fashioned date movie and that makes this one particularly welcome.

Angelina Jolie plays Lanie, a television news reporter in Seattle who thinks her life is just about perfect. For her, that means a great apartment, great friends, a great fiance, and a shot at her dream job on the network. And perfection is what she strives for, from the tip of her cotton candy hair helmet to the calves that show the effect of thousands of hours on a stairclimber. She never questions what she wants or what she has to do to get there.

But she is sent to do a story on a homeless man who predicts the future, and he tells her what the score will be in the football game to be played later that day. He tells her that it will hail the next morning. And he tells her that she will not get the job she wants, and has only a week to live. When the first two predictions come true, she begins to think that she might just have a week to live, and that her life is not so perfect after all.

Where did Lanie get her ideas about what constiituted perfection? There is some nonsense about sibling rivalry with a sister who has a rich husband and a fancy house. What makes more sense is that Lanie gets her idea of perfection from the very place she seeks it, television. With an indestructible platinum helmet hairdo, flawless muscle tone, and a baseball player fiance, she is a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Barbara Walters. Her idol is Deborah Connors (Stockard Channing), the queen of interviewers, who always gets her subjects to cry.

The prospect of having no more time makes Lainie think about what she was postponing. The first surprise is who she asks for advice. She turns for help to a man she thought she hated, Pete (Edward Burns), her cameraman. He tells her to talk to the people she cares about most.

The script has no surprises, but Jolie and Burns have a nice rythym as they constantly ask each other to define their words. It is easy to believe that they would both be attracted to someone who doesn’t let them get away with easy charm. The biggest surprise is Jolie in a role clearly designed for someone like Meg Ryan or Sandra Bullock. She doesn’t let Lanie get too cute and shows us Lanie’s vulnerability, inescurity, and her capacity for giddy joy.

Parents should know that the movie has some strong language. An unmarried couple lives together and there are references to a drunken sexual encounter and an out of wedlock pregnancy. Getting drunk is portrayed as freeing. There is non-graphic violence. Some viewers may be upset by the seer’s prediction. And some younger viewers may be disturbed by the reference to divorced parents, even though it is amicable.

Families who see this movie should talk about how we decide what “perfection” means to each of us and whose approval matters most to us. How do we live in a way that balances planning for the future with recognizing what is important in the present. How do our family dynamics transfer over into our work relationships? Why didn’t Lanie understand how important she was to her father?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the black and white classic “Theodora Goes Wild.” They will also enjoy Martha Beck’s book “Following Your North Star.”

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Date movie Drama

Quiz Show

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:17 am

Plot: This true story takes place in the early days of television. One of the most popular and successful program formats was the quiz show, in which contestants competed for huge cash prizes by answering questions. Charles Van Doren (played by Ralph Fiennes) was a member of one of America’s most distinguished literary families, and he became an immensely popular contestant, on “Twenty-One.” When it turned out that the quiz shows were fixed, and that contestants were supplied with the answers by the shows’ producers, Van Doren became the symbol of betrayal.

In this film, Van Doren is contrasted with Herb Stempel (John Turturro), and Congressional staff investigator Dick Goodwin (Rob Morrow). Stempel, a Jewish man from Brooklyn with “a face for radio” is bitter over being pushed aside for the impeccably WASP-y Columbia professor. Goodwin shares the Jewish outsider’s background with Stempel and the Ivy League polish (as he frequently mentions, he was first in his class at Harvard Law School) with Van Doren. Dazzled by Van Doren, Goodwin does not want to believe that he, like Stempel, participated in the fraud. When he finds out that Van Doren did, Goodwin tries to protect him from being discovered. He wants to bring the real culprits, the network executives, to light. But when the hearings are held, the Congressmen’s cozy relationships with the network executives prevent any tough questions from being asked. The producer takes the blame.

Eight years later, the producer was back in television. Stempel became a bureaucrat. Van Doren, forced to leave Columbia, lived very privately, working for Encyclopedia Britannica. Goodwin went to work for President Kennedy and later wrote highly respected books.

Discussion: This is an outstanding drama that provides an excellent opportunity for examining the way that people make moral choices. Stempel cheats because he wants to be accepted and respected, and because he believes that is the way the world works. Nevertheless, he is outraged and bitter when he finds that he has been cheated, that the producer has no intention of living up to his promise to find him a job in television. And it is important to note that his decision to tell the truth was based on vengeance, not on taking responsibility for a moral failure.

When first presented with the option of cheating, Van Doren reflects (“I’m just wondering what Kant would make of this”), and then refuses. Indeed, he concludes this is just a test of his suitability, and one that he has passed. Once on the program, however, he is given a question he had answered correctly in the interview. He knows the answer, but he also knows that it is not a legitimate competition for him to answer it. (He does not know that Stempel has agreed to fail). At that moment, what is he thinking? What moral calculus goes through his mind? Is this the decision to cheat, or is that a separate decision, later? In the movie’s most painful scene, Van Doren must tell his father what he has done. At first, Van Doren makes some distinctions between being given the questions, so he can get the answers on his own, and being given the answers. But he knows that both are equally wrong.

Why, then, did he do it? The movie suggests that it was in part a way to establish himself as independently successful, out of the shadow of his parents and uncle. He enjoyed the fame and the money. He argues that no one is being hurt by it. Goodwin, on the other hand, sees that it is wrong, and never for a moment hesitates when the producer tries to buy him off. Yet, as Goodwin’s wife points out, he makes his own moral compromises when he tries to protect Van Doren. In part, he does it because he is after those he considers the real culprits. But in part he does it because he likes Van Doren, and because as much as he takes pride in being first in his class at Harvard, some part of him still thinks that the Van Dorens are better than he is.

Questions for Kids:

· Why did Stempel agree to cheat? Why did he tell the truth to the investigators? Why did Van Doren cheat?

· What were some of the feelings Van Doren had about his parents? How can you tell?

· In what ways was Goodwin like Stempel? In what ways was he like Van Doren? Why was Goodwin intimidated by the Van Dorens?

· Who was responsible for the “quiz show scandals?” Was the outcome fair? Who should have been punished, and how?

Connections: Goodwin’s account of the story can be found in his book, Remembering America: A Voice from the 60s. “Champagne for Caesar,” a light satiric comedy on the same subject, was produced in 1950, several years before the events portrayed in this movie. It is very funny, with outstanding performances by Ronald Coleman as the professor/contestant and Celeste Holm as the femme fatale brought in to shake his concentration. The question they find to stump him with is a lulu! Van Doren’s father is played by Paul Scofield, who appeared as Sir Thomas More in “A Man for All Seasons.” Goodwin’s wife is played by future Oscar- winner Mira Sorvino.

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Based on a true story Drama