Rolling In The Green

This was a commissioned article for the touring theatre programme of Theatre Royal Bath and Rose Theatre Productions' production of Stones in His Pockets (March–July 2019).

From its breathtaking countryside and colossal cliffs to its quaint villages and bustling capital city, Ireland has provided film-makers over the years with a ready-made set. Hollywood in particular has been a regular visitor, with everything from Technicolor romances to intergalactic epics filmed on location in the Emerald Isle.

The first Hollywood film to be shot in Ireland (and indeed outside the USA) was Sidney Olcott’s A Lad From Old Ireland (1910), marketed by the Kalem Film Company of New York as a “great trans-Atlantic drama”. A Canadian American of Irish descent, Olcott drew on his own experience as an emigrant to play the part of a poor Irish farmer who dreams of a better life in the USA. The film’s authenticity came not only from the eschewing of typical Irish stereotypes (the labourer and the domestic servant) but also by being shot on location in County Kerry and County Cork.

A similar theme to A Lad From Old Ireland can be seen in John Ford’s American melodrama The Quiet Man (1952), starring John Wayne as a retired boxer who leaves America and finds love with Margaret O’Hara in his Irish birthplace. The film has been accused by some of presenting a romanticised idyll of Ireland, part of which is perhaps down to the beautiful Technicolor cinematography, with the rolling Irish countryside as much a star of the film as Wayne or O’Hara. Several locals also appeared in the film as extras - whether any of them were like Jake or Charlie is unknown!

The interior scenes of The Quiet Man, like many American films, were shot back in the Hollywood studios. Ireland didn’t have an indigenous film studio until 1958, when Louis Elliman and Emmet Dalton opened Ardmore Studios in Bray, County Wicklow. The first American film produced at Ardmore was Michael Anderson’s Shake Hands With the Devil in 1959, starring James Cagney as a Dublin IRA leader, and the studio went on to attract high-profile Hollywood film-makers such as Francis Ford Coppola, John Huston, Stanley Kubrick and Robert Altman.

Perhaps the most famous Hollywood film made at Ardmore Studios was Mel Gibson’s Academy Award-winning Braveheart (1995). Starring Gibson as Scottish freedom-fighter William Wallace, the film boosted tourism in Scotland, which is somewhat ironic considering that much of it was shot in Ireland. One of the reasons Gibson was encouraged to film there was because of the Irish government’s promise that he could use the local reserve army as extras for the film’s battle scenes, which also employed horses and their owners from Wicklow and County Kildare.

Braveheart was also a notable beneficiary of the Irish government’s 1987 Section 35 tax incentive, which allowed overseas investors in films made in Ireland to deduct the cost of their investment from their taxable income. Several amendments have been made to tax relief since then, including what became known as the ‘Tom Cruise clause’ in 2015, which extended the definition of eligible spending to include the cost of all cast and crew working in Ireland, such as those from outside the European Union. Former Taoiseach Enda Kelly was said to have been inspired to make the changes after talking with director Steven Spielberg, who first filmed in Ireland on Saving Private Ryan in 1997; his latest film, The Turning, was shot in Wicklow. Such is the enduring lure of the Emerald Isle.

 

Five Irish landmarks in Hollywood films

The Quiet Man (1952)

Directed by Academy Award winner John Ford, The Quiet Man was set in the fictional Irish village of Inisfree, although it was actually filmed in County Mayo and County Galway. Both Catholic and Protestant churches were featured in the film, one for interior shots and one for exteriors. The dilapidated Connemara cottage in the film was awarded protected status in 2015, and you can visit replicas of it in Cong in Mayo and at Maam Cross in Galway.

Braveheart (1995)

Although some scenes were shot in Scotland, Mel Gibson’s Academy Award-winning Braveheart was mostly filmed in Ireland. Scenes set in York were filmed at Trim Castle in County Meath and Dublin’s Dunsoghly Castle recreated the castle in Edinburgh, while the Battle of Stirling Bridge was filmed on the Curragh Plains in County Kildare and the hills of Wicklow stood in for the Scottish Highlands.

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Academy Award winner Steven Spielberg’s World War II epic Saving Private Ryan, starring Tom Hanks and Matt Damon as the titular private, was praised for its dramatic D-Day landing scenes. But it was Ballinesker Beach, Curracloe Strand, in County Wexford rather than Normandy that was invaded by the Allied Forces, which, like Braveheart, included in their ranks hundreds of extras from the local army reserve.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

The sixth instalment of the Harry Potter film series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, featured a scene with the eponymous hero hunting for magical objects called Horcruxes in a seaside cave. While the interior shots of the cave were created using sets and CGI, the exteriors were filmed at the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare. The cliffs are a popular spot for film-makers, having previously appeared in Ryan’s Daughter and The Princess Bride.

Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)

Both the seventh and eighth instalments of the Star Wars saga, The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, saw the character Luke Skywalker exile himself to an oceanic planet, Ahch-To. The planet was actually the Skellig Islands, a UNESCO World Heritage Site off the coast of County Kerry. The twin-pinnacled crag Skellig Michael featured in the film doesn’t actually contain a Jedi temple, but it is the site of an ancient monastic settlement.

© John Good