One of my all time favorites.

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Good concept, poorly executed.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Sean Thornton (John Wayne) returns back to the village where he was born in Ireland after moving across to America when he was young where he forged a career as a boxer. Now retired, he plans on buying back his former family home whilst also falling for fiery Mary Kate Danaher (Maureen O'Hara). However, Kate's brother Will Danaher (Victor McLaglen) doesn't approve of their relationship and makes things rather difficult for the couple. Meanwhile, Thornton is also hiding a dark secret from his past as well...The first hour of The Quiet Man (in my humble opinion) is where the film is at its weakest; not a great deal happens and character development is rather poor. I can possibly see that revealing little about Thornton until right near the end may have worked for some people - perhaps they may have been intrigued by him. However, I myself found it rather tedious and in order to enjoy a film I need to be able to form some kind of emotional investment in the characters or the story and for the first hour or so I was simply unable to do this. It's all just a little bit too quaint, twee and cutesy for my liking. A lot of the songs are pretty bad (with one song being repeated again about 5 minutes after it was originally sung for some reason).Thankfully, it does improve slightly in the second half (when Thornton's dark secret is revealed). It was at this point that I became more involved with the film because I was finally given a better understanding of our protagonist, but I do think that it was a bad move just shoving this reveal on towards the end of the film - it strikes of laziness and I do feel that Thornton should have been given more development and depth earlier in the film which may have made it a more enticing character study. The reveal explains that Thornton killed his opponent during a boxing match which caused him to hang up his gloves for good and he vows never to fight again yet later in the film he contradicts himself and fights Denahar to prove to Mary that he isn't a coward?? To go from Thornton pouring his heart out to a priest about vowing to never fight again only then to start brawling with Denahar seemed a little strange - this is made worse by the fight being totally unnecessary and being given a rather comical spin (both men have water thrown in their faces on several occasions and they even stop for a beer at one point halfway through their fight). It's also made worse by the fact that Thornton seems unfazed by the prospect of knocking seven bells out of Danaher (Thornton has an emotional flashback when he gets knocked to the ground, but for some reasons this never happens on the numerous occasions when he knocks Denahar to the ground??). Despite this final fight being entertaining, narratively it went against pretty much everything that proceeded it.Still it isn't completely irredeemable; the likes of Flynn, McLagen & Fitzgerald all play their parts in making this film as good as they can. Wayne has his usual swagger about him, but he isn't great here and his performance here feels rather artificial - he delivers his lines very slowly and seems to pause for about 5 seconds after delivering about 5 words. There are some funny moments in the film (although Fitzgerald is responsible for most of these).The Quiet Man may have worked better when it was released and was probably heavily reliant on John Wayne's star power, but I found large parts of the film to be uninvolving and despite the second half being quite entertaining it also seemed to give out mixed messages. Average and watchable, but that's about it.

Almost everyone agrees on one thing about the 1952 Oscars: That Cecil B. DeMille's punishingly long blockbuster three-ring soap opera The Greatest Show On Earth did not deserve to win Best Picture. The Quiet Man I personally feel should have got the nod Best Picture for 1952 . It stars John Wayne as Sean Thornton, a former heavyweight boxer who returns to fictional Innisfree, Ireland to reclaim the family farm. There's a sensitive, complicated romance-with independent-minded Mary Kate (Maureen O'Hara), sister of local bully Red Danaher (Victor McLaglen, one of Ford's best company players)-but the real attraction here is Ford's masterful maneuvering of tones and his fluid handling of a large cast of colorful characters, qualities which also defined his iconic (and then-underrated) Westerns. Shot partly on location in Ireland and designed in the lushest greens ever squeezed out of Technicolor, The Quiet Man is a movie that isn't about a whole lot, but yet seems to contain so much-from Wayne's easygoing charisma to the notoriously protracted climactic fight to the febrile, film-noir-like flashback to Sean's boxing days. The Quiet Man is one of Wayne best films and his made possible by beautiful spitfire Maureen O'Hara .

THE QUIET MAN is an unusual John Ford/John Wayne collaboration in that it isn't a western; for a change, it's a broad comedy with a backdrop of Irish characters, charting the misadventures of a punch-drunk boxer who falls in love and makes a ferocious rival in the process. I suppose it might have been funny, once, but alas, no longer, at least not for this viewer. I found the humour long-winded and belaboured and the slow pace and lengthy running time a dual assault on the viewer's senses. Wayne is reliably droll and amusing and Victor McLaglen is consistently larger-than-life, but the rest of the film just feels slow and unfocused.

Okay, so I never sat through this movie until recently. This was one of my grandfather's favorite films, and since his tastes usually match mine when it comes to old films, I gave this one a try. Oh, boy...Well, if you like films that portray Irish people in the most stereotypical way possible, this is certainly the film for you! Even though this film is old, I cannot believe the way violence against women is glorified in this film. Call me a feminist, liberal, or whatever, but this film is by far one of the most sexist that I have ever seen. John Ford had a reputation of being nasty to many of his actors, and from what I've read, he was especially nasty to Maureen O'Hara almost every time they worked together. It almost sounds like he got some kind of perverse pleasure in watching her being mistreated on film, as she is in this one. Somehow, though, O'Hara has always praised him, in spite of how he treated her, which baffles me. Then again, having read her autobiography, O'Hara does not sound like she ever had a very healthy relationship with any man, aside from maybe Wayne and Charles Laughton. The only good part of this film is the scenery. Otherwise, it is boring, outdated, sexist, and I don't understand why this was such a favorite of my grandfather's.