Guest Blogger: Mark Connelly, Author of The IRA on Film and Television (Giveaway)

The Irish Republican Army (IRA) has for decades pursued the goal of unifying its homeland into a single sovereign nation, ending British rule in Northern Ireland. On film, the IRA has appeared in mainstream motion pictures such as The Quiet Man, action films like Blown Away, political dramas, dark comedies, and even a spaghetti Western, A Fistful of Dynamite. The IRA has been explored by major directors from three countries, including John Ford (The Informer), John Frankenheimer (Ronin), Carol Reed (Odd Man Out), David Lean (Ryan’s Daughter), Neil Jordan (Michael Collins), and Jim Sheridan (In the Name of the Father).  IRA characters have been portrayed by international stars, such as Victor McLaglen, James Cagney, Anthony Hopkins, James Mason, Richard Gere, and Brad Pitt.  Films about the Irish Republican Army range from realistic docudramas like Paul Greengrass’ Bloody Sunday, shot with handheld cameras and natural lighting to create the sensation of watching 1972 newsreel footage, to Joseph Merhi’s action farce Riot in which a British superhero battles IRA bikers in the streets of Los Angeles during a race riot.

Whether portrayed as a heroic patriot, ruthless terrorist, or troubled anti-hero, the Irish rebel has emerged as a universally recognized cinematic archetype.   Over eighty motion pictures include IRA references, and IRA characters have appeared in iconic American television series such as Hawaii Five-O, Columbo, and Law and Order.

This illustrated history analyzes film depictions of the IRA from the 1916 Easter Rising to the peace process of the 1990s. Topics include America’s role in creating both the IRA and its cinematic image, the organization’s brief association with the Nazis, the changing depiction of women in IRA films, and critical reception of IRA films in Ireland, Britain, and the United States.

The Gangster Film:  Criminalizing the IRA by Mark Connelly

           

The Irish Republican Army has long been implicated in criminal activity – typically robberies, smuggling, protection rackets, and money laundering – to obtain funds to purchase arms, support prisoners’ families, and pay pensions.  As an underground organization, it has engaged in “expropriations,” generally aimed at the rich and state enterprises. However necessary to finance operations, these actions provide political opponents with a powerful avenue of attack, allowing them to discredit the IRA for its crimes rather than its ideology.

            Filmmakers have made the IRA-crime link for dramatic and political reasons. 

Carol Reed’s classic Odd Man Out devotes more running time to a mill robbery and its aftermath than the obscure political motivations behind it.  On its American release, ads did not even mention Northern Ireland, instead announcing a new movie about “a killer on the loose . . . hiding in the shadows . . . while an angry city screams for his blood.” Significantly, the alternative title for Reed’s film was Gang War.

            British films in particular build on the criminal theme.  The Day They Robbed the Bank of England (1960), directed by Basil Deardon, stars Aldo Ray as a turn-of-the century Irish-American who arrives in London to help an Irish revolutionary organization tunnel into the Bank of England to steal a million pounds in gold.  The Long Good Friday (1980) stars Bob Hoskins as the mob lord of London whose empire is torn asunder on a single day as the IRA who “run half of Londonderry” supplant English gangs and become the new mafia bosses of Britain’s largest city.  David Caffrey’s black comedy Divorcing Jack (1998) includes the IRA bank robber Patrick “Cow Pat” Keegan.  Dressed like a Hollywood Mafioso with styled hair, designer suit, and jewelry, he appears as simply a murderous hooligan braced by sneering gunmen.  He has robbed over thirty banks for the IRA, but the film never offers a political rationale for the crimes.

            American movies have been less likely to dismiss the IRA as a criminal organization.  In John Frankenheimer’s Ronin (1998) the mastermind of a criminal conspiracy to steal a mysterious suitcase turns out to be an Irish terrorist “denounced by the IRA.”  By ascribing terrorism and crime to lone wolves and dissidents, American films cast the “real IRA” in a favorable light, presenting it as revolutionary organization that operates under self-imposed rules of engagement.

To get your paperback copy of THE IRA ON FILM AND TELEVISION by Mark Connelly, visit Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/The-IRA-Film-Television-History/dp/0786447362/

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Watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvj_ii7ae_Y  

Born in Philadelphia, Mark Connelly completed a masters degree in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he received a Ph.D in English.  His books include The Diminished Self: Orwell and the Loss of Freedom, Orwell and Gissing, Deadly Closets:  The Fiction of Charles Jackson, and several college textbooks.  He currently teaches literature and film in Milwaukee, where he is the Vice-President of the Irish Cultural and Heritage Center of Wisconsin.

His latest book is The IRA on Film and Television.

You can visit his website at www.theiraonfilmandtelevision.com.

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