The Rising of the Moon (1957)

THE RISING OF THE MOON  (1957)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: John Ford
    Tyrone Power, Noel Purcell, Cyril Cusack,
    Jack MacGowran, Jimmy O'Dea, Tony Quinn,
    Kevin Casey, Maureen Potter, Denis O'Dea, 
    Frank Lawton, Donal Donnelly, Maureen Cusack
Ask any casual student of film to name a John Ford movie set in Ireland, and you might get "The Informer" or "The Quiet Man", but probably not this one, a trilogy of short pieces acted by Dublin's Abbey Players and shot on location in black and white. In the first story, Noel Purcell plays a man of limited means whose stubborn refusal to pay a fine (or let anybody else pay if for him) is going to land him in jail. The second is a comic episode about what happens when a train making a whistle stop keeps getting delayed at the station. The third, set during the Troubles and composed mostly of tilt shots, has the members of a theater company engaged in a plot to free a condemned rebel from the gallows. All three play on Ford's dual capacity for corn and darkness: fatalism and blarney mixing it up, sharing a jar and laying claim to joint possession of the Irish soul.