Poitin As Reflected In Irish Film

Films in Ireland from the early 1900’s up until the 1970’s were mostly made by foreign filmmakers, mainly British and American. However, in the short space of time since then Ireland has been able to carve out an impressive history of filmmaking and enjoy plenty of success at home and abroad (Tracy, 2007). In the 1970’s Irish film directors began to emerge making films about real Irish stories rather than the typical Hollywood view of Ireland. Bob Quinn, Joe Comerford, and Cathal Black were among the first to begin dealing with indigenous stories and would become known as part of the first wave of Irish filmmakers (Volta, 2012). This essay will look at these three directors work and show how each one helped bring authentic Irish stories to

The film is about an old man who brews and sells his own alcohol, known as Poitin, in an isolated area in the West of Ireland. The old man is harassed by two local brutes who are looking for his stash and threaten to kill him and rape his daughter. A far cry from the typical Hollywood Irish love story. This film showed rural Ireland in a very different way, its lovely green fields were replaced by grey looking fields filled with rocks and stones, suddenly rural Ireland looked very grim. Its characters were unlovable and quite hostile (Tracy, 2007), and in the film people were seen queuing up to collect their doles from the local Garda station something one would not see in Hollywood’s vision of rural Ireland, but was a reality for a lot of people in Ireland at this time. Poitin gave it viewers a completely different perspective of life in rural Ireland, it was almost the complete opposite of the films that had gone before it romanticising Irish life. It would seem as though Poitin was a direct attempt to change the Irish stereotype that had been established through film (Volta, 2012). Bob’s film Budawanny is another that gained him a lot of attention. The film tells the story of a priest who gets his housekeeper pregnant, another story miles away from the typical romantic Ireland. He later explored the isolation of clerical life again with his

All three films involve the political situation in Northern Ireland but also share a general concern with those on the margins of Irish society (McLoone, 2003). Traveller takes a look at the life of a newlywed traveller couple whose marriage was an arranged one. The two travel to Northern Ireland to smuggle contraband back across the border to sell. Travellers in Ireland at this time were on the margins of Irish society and not many people knew a lot about their way of life. This film also touches on real issues of this time, cross border smuggling was everyday part of life in border towns both North and South of the border. The couple also meet an IRA man along the way and attend a fundraiser. Comerford constantly addressed the potical situation at this in his films as for many in Ireland it was a real issue of the times. His next film once again involved the troubles from the North, Reefer and the Model. This story had characters never before seen in films coming out of Ireland, it involved a prostitute trying to give up heroin, an IRA man on the run, a gay man and a disenchanted criminal (McLoone, 2003). It was these types of new characters that helped drive Ireland away from the romantic Hollywood stereotype that had been imbedded in its cinema, and also gave the Irish people characters more relatable to its society. Comerford’s next film High Boot Benny is