John Ford Dreaming the Quiet Man

Dreaming the Quiet Man includes interviews with aficionados of Ford like Martin Scorsese Peter Bogdanovicz Jim Sheridan William Dowling and Joe McBride There is mesmeric archive and rare photographs of the making of the film The main location of the documentary is Fords ancestral homeland of Connemara on the west coat of Ireland where his parents were born We meet Fords cousins the Feeneys who tell the story of Fords parents departure from Ireland after the Great Famine and the young Fords return to Ireland in 1922 to visit his cousins the Thorntons and saw their house being burned down by the infamous Black and Tans Ford under the pretense of scouting locations for a movie gave money to the IRA We travel to Portland Maine where Ford grew up and went on to become a director in the first bloom of Hollywood The boy made it good but Ireland was always on his mind