Irish America

Irish America

joseph McBride

Where’s the Great Film on The Great Hunger?

By Joseph McBride

November/December 1998

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It's a subject that's virtually taboo to moviemakers. Studios believe audiences wouldn't want to watch a story about such a grim historical period. But even though the events took place long ago, they remain a matter of vital concern to people throughout the world. Many books are written about the subject. Activists lobby for it to be taught in schools. Eventually, filmmakers … [Read more...] about Where’s the Great Film on The Great Hunger?

Anjelica Huston’s Irish Homecoming

By Joseph McBride, Contributor
April / May 2000

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When I wrote the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award tribute to John Huston in 1983, I had the delightful opportunity to work with his daughter Anjelica. With warmth and enthusiasm, she hosted a segment of our CBS-TV special featuring testimonials by her father's colleagues. Then thirty-one years old, Anjelica seemed like a young gazelle, an exotically beautiful … [Read more...] about Anjelica Huston’s Irish Homecoming

Film Forum: A Late Encounter with the Enemy

By Joseph McBride
December / January 2000

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Few things are sadder than a missed opportunity. The story of the San Patricios, the Irish emigrants and their comrades of other ethnic groups who fought for Mexico during the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846-48, is rich and underexplored dramatic material. Complex and stirring issues of loyalty and heroism resound throughout the saga of the Saint Patrick's Battalion, which consisted … [Read more...] about Film Forum: A Late Encounter with the Enemy

Film Forum: The Importance of Being Earnest

By Joseph McBride, Contributor
August / September 2002

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Hyping up Wilde in Earnest won't win Parker and Oscars. "Life is too important to be taken seriously," Oscar Wilde observed. He demonstrated that principle most dazzlingly in The Importance of Being Earnest, his 1895 play satirizing, among other things, the uselessness of British upper-class twits, the hypocrisy of would-be moral arbiters, the shallowness of social standing, … [Read more...] about Film Forum: The Importance of Being Earnest

The Quiet Man Turns Fifty

By Joseph McBride, Contributor
February / March 2002

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This year marks fiftieth anniversary of John Ford's The Quiet Man, the favorite movie of many Irish Americans. The native Irish tend to see it with more ambivalence, yet the readers of the Irish Times in 1996 voted it the greatest Irish movie ever made. The beguiling comedy-drama won Ford his fourth Academy Award as best director, as well as bringing Oscars to cinematographers … [Read more...] about The Quiet Man Turns Fifty