Community and the Individual in John Ford's The Quiet Man

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Community and the Individual in John Ford's The Quiet Man

John Ford's The Quiet Man is a romantic comedy that demonstrates Ford's world-view by way of symbolic visual devices as well as in the basic plot: the outsider being indoctrinated into a community through the gradual understanding of rituals and rites of passage, as well as the little nuances of everyday life. John Ford, a filmmaker with a strong Irish ancestry and pride in his roots, directed this film about the return of a retired boxer to the town of his birth, Innisfree; the plot is just the backbone of a film which is fleshed out by the ideas Ford expressed throughout all his films: the value and meaning of community, communicated with a unique dramatic rhythm. This dramatic rhythm follows a pattern of assertion -> resistance -> accommodation. Ford also uses many icons (specific visual imagery repeated throughout many of his films which have a consistent meaning and/or function for Ford) to express his ideas, such as the use of doorways, which represent a boundary between a safe area and a dangerous one, and the watching/waiting shot, which shows someone in the throes of hope or sorrow, and demonstrates homecomings or departures. Other icons found in the film, and the larger body of Ford's work, include the horizon shot, which shows the passage from one mode of life to another, and the parade/procession, which displays community harmony, usually used in a showing of community success. Also used is the reaction-shot, which serves to appraise the importance of a dramatic happening through the reactions of various characters, and lastly and very importantly, the shared imbibing of spirits, which is part of any sound celebration in Ford's world.

The opening sce...

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...mily makes life easier and more pleasurable. Ford uses his icons to show the passing from one situation or lifestyle into another (such as horizon shots: from the American life to the Irish, or from the single life into the married) or to show the community in harmony (processions/parades, and shared spirits). His unusual dramatic rhythm is felt on a larger level (Sean's assertion into the community, the resistance of Red Will and later Mary Kate, the accommodation of the donnybrook and the final dinner scene) as well as in each individual scene; this progression from assertion to resistance to accommodation, paired with the iconography, gives The Quiet Man a flavor and style all its own, and with the gorgeous Irish countryside as backdrop, the result is an essay on the ultimate ideal situation of community harmony and the individual sacrifice it takes to achieve it.

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