The Quiet Man/YMMV

• Adaptation Displacement: Few people have read the short story the film is based on.
• Award Snub: The part of Thornton was practically John Wayne's first role as a romantic lead, and while he's pretty much acting as JOHN WAYNE, he's surprisingly good as the romantic-at-heart Sean Thorton. That he wasn't even nominated for Best Actor stands as a minor injustice.
  • The Best Picture nomination was nice, but the film lost to The Greatest Show On Earth? Granted, they were also up against High Noon and Moulin Rouge Rouge ^[1].
• Hilarious in Hindsight: When Wayne petitions the Widow Tillane (Mildred Natwick) to buy back "White O'Morning" property, the Widow Tillane quizzes him on his motives, joking that he was going to convert the farm into "a national shrine, perhaps charge tuppence a visit for a guided tour through the little thatched cottage." In Real Life, the community where the filming took place – in County Mayo, Ireland -- has kept up the film sets, including that cottage, for the waves of tourists who come to visit.
• Values Dissonance: Jokes about drunken Irishmen and the threat of domestic violence were perfectly acceptable back then.

---

Back to The Quiet Man

1. ↑ Not the musical, but a José Ferrer Biopic of Toulouse-Lautrec