IRELAND IN MOVIES
Famous Film Locations of the Emerald Isle
A
first exposure to the beauty of Ireland, for those not born there,
is usually in a motion picture
theater on a big screen, or perhaps less
impressively on a TV screen. My first strong recollection of Ireland
was David Lean’s Ryan’s
Daughter, the intimate epic set in the days of the Irish rebellion
of 1916 during WWI. The movie was not a hit, but played for weeks in
the days
of “Road
Show” theaters, with the indelible majesty of the crashing waves
of the rocky coast of the western Ireland on wide screens in glorious
full 70mm. The stunning guns on the slabs storm scenes were shot on the
Bridges of
Ross in
County
Clare in the west of Ireland. The opening sequence was filmed on the
Moher cliffs (see Cliffs
of Moher), while the village 
scenes were filmed in County
Kerry near Dunquin where sets were built for the film to blend in with
the natural scenery (see Kerry
Walking Tours). The village set was destroyed,
but the ruins of the schoolhouse still stand on the Dingle Penninsula.
Over
20
years later, Ron Howard filmed the Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman movie Far and Away in virtually the same landscape. Earlier audiences
where introduced
Ireland in the more sedate John Wayne film with Maureen O’Hara, The Quiet Man, filmed in the Connemara region north of Galway
in and around
the village of Cong in County Mayo, along the north shore of Lough Corrib.
Mel Gibson, with half blue-painted face, decked out in tartan kilt, led
a charge across the Curragh Racecourse which cut into a battle on
the plains of Kildare in Braveheart.
While the elements of the story cobbled together from
bits of historic references took place in Scotland, most of the movie
was filmed on location in Ireland, with cameras rolling on the scenic
green
wooded hills and glens of County Wicklow to the south from Dublin, often
called the Garden of Ireland. In another film for which Ireland’s
unspoiled scenery stood in for a different country (mostly for the tax
breaks) was John Boorman’s 1981 version of the legends of King
Arthur, Excalibur which mythically and historically took place
in Wales (see Merlin’s
Hill) but scenes filmed on the lands of the Powerscourt
Estate of Wicklow near the monastic heritage 
Glendalough ruins (see Glendalough),
and at Cahir Castle in Tipperary, where Stanley Kubrick filmed portions
of Barry
Lyndon.
The
Irish rebellion
was also depicted in Wicklow in Neil Jordon’s biopic of Michael
Collins in the town of Bray which also served as a backdrop in My
Left Foot, The
Commitments and Meryl Streep’s dramatics in the 1930s set Dancing
at Lughnasa.
The British TV series of Ballykissangel was filmed in the village
of Avoca where only wool weavers spun until the arrival of movie crews
(see Avoca
Weaving Mill). you can still sample an excellent Irish stew at
Fitzgerald's Pub. A driving tour map can be found at tourism offices
for the movie location sites
of Wicklow.
Other parts of Ireland have been just as fertile for film locales. On
Ireland’s
southeast coast, the harbor town of Youghal near Cork was stand-in for
1800’s New England in John Huston’s film version of the
Herman Melville nautical classic, Moby Dick, starring Gregory
Peck. The dockside inn where Ishmael shared a bunk with Queequeg, before
sailing
on the Pequod, can still be visited for a pint of Murphys Stout and
a look at the filming photos of the harbor converted to a film set (see Moby
Dick Pub Youghal). The brutal opening sequences of the Normandy
beach landings of World War II in Steven Spielberg’s Saving
Private Ryan were staged
on the popular summer tourist beach of Curracloe Strand in County Wexford
doubling for 1944 Omaha Beach.
Dublin,
of course features in many films mentioned here, much of My Left Foot and Michael
Collins (see Collins
Barracks),
and John Huston’s
very last film, The Dead, was set in an old Georgian house
on the Liffey River
next to
the James Joyce Bridge, which has recently been renovated as a tourist
attraction. And in Belfast of Northern Ireland, the ornate Crown Liquor
Saloon, a former gin palace of the Victorian Age was at the center
of the suspense of
Carol Reed’s 1947 thriller drama Odd Man Out with
James Mason. Divorcing Jack was also filmed in the city in
the late 1990s, as well as Jim Sheridan’s
film trilogy about the “troubles”, In the Name of the
Father, Some Mother’s Son and The Boxer were all shot
partially in Belfast, and the opening scenes of Neil Jordan’s The
Crying Game were
filmed in Armagh County. To find most of these sites excpt for the
city ones, will require a car, preferably with GPS. © Bargain
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SEE ALSO:
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AMERICAN PRESIDENTS IRISH ROOTS
