The Reel Thing: Irish Film Sites

I wanna tell you a story – Casablanca, for instance. All great movies are great stories. They work the ground between the real and the imagined. But if you really want to learn about the movie business, which is now all about lawyers and accountants and PR men, then go no further than the Casablanca correspondence between Warner Brothers and the Marx Brothers on this fine theme. In a radio incarnation, Groucho appeared as the smartass lawyer from Flywheel, Flywheel and Schuster, an experience which he put to devastating effect with Sam Warner.

But as this piece is meant to be about Irish movie sets – as opposed to set dancing – let me really tell you a story. Many years ago, I was in Dublin with my then 12 year old son. Doing the culture thing, as all well-intentioned parents do, I dragged him into the courtyard of Dublin Castle in order to give him some understanding of the mixed up history of this island. Picture, if you will, my stunned silence when we turned the corner and were met with the largest British flag ever to fly in Ireland flapping idly in the middle of the yard.

Time went into complete reverse when an ancient truckful of British soldiers raced past a very twentieth century container and screeched to a halt beside a parade ground party of top brass, all immaculately kitted out circa 1921. Never mind splitting the atom, more than one second was sundered before we realised that we were party to the famous handover scene from “Michael Collins”, Neil Jordan’s story of the mastermind behind the IRA campaign which finally brought about Irish independence. If you ever see the movie, enjoy the moment when the pompous British official complains to Collins that he is eight minutes late for the ceremony. “After 800 years, you think a few minutes matter?” says Collins.

And that’s the point about Ireland as a location – you don’t have to be working on “The Philadelphia Experiment” to experience some very odd things happening to time and space. For instance, you probably know that “The Quiet Man” was set in Cong, Co. Mayo. There’s the Quiet Man Tour, the Quiet Man bar, the QM gas station etc. All you need now is the QM2 moored off Galway and they can start the sequel, the prequel or the director’s roughcut of Star Wars 25 – The Empire Strikes Bog.

Clearly, city streets make for better locations than quiet beaches. They are more easily transformed and more recognisable to your average movie fan, although your eyes can be well deceived (see above). But the country is equally adaptable. You could be driving along a few back roads past a beautiful sweep of beach in County Wexford in the south east of the country, quietly and happily oblivious that the beach in question was the stage for the invasion scenes in “Saving Private Ryan.” Indeed, many of us feel that you would be far better off just admiring the beach for itself, rather than as an adjunct to some human endeavour.

It’s much the same in the west of the country, at Inch on the south side of the Dingle peninsula. Certainly, you can admire the wonderful strand where David Lean set the story about Private Ryan’s daughter – or maybe it was his granny – but when the gaffers and the best boys depart, you just need to go out and walk that beach on your own on any windswept morning (and begod, sor, there’s no shortage of them mornin’s in Dingle) to discover what makes this little island such a fine setting.

The Irish countryside is – or was – a better stand-in for many a place. It has doubled as Flanders fields in The Blue Max – aerial combat in World War I. It has been Normandy for Private Ryan and it has been medieval Scotland for Braveheart. If you get the chance, do go to Trim and see the castle – a very fine ruin, indeed – and only 30 miles from Dublin. You don’t need to picture Big Mel running around the battlements in facepaint – the woad to victory, so to speak. Just let your own imagination get to work as the corbies cry and wheel around the tower and the riverbank.

Of course, some films just had to be set in certain spots. You couldn’t imagine Angela’s Ashes being set in anywhere but Limerick, now could you? But did you know that “Educating Rita”, a lovely British comedy starring Michael Caine, was not set amidst the dreaming spires of Oxford but in the quiet cloisters of Maynooth, a seminary town just west of Dublin and a few miles from the K Club, where Europe and the US will do battle for the Ryder Cup in September 2006?

As you would expect, Dublin has been host to many movies, but it has become very difficult to transport yourself back to any era but our own amidst the traffic and the congestion that is modern Dublin. As an Australian client remarked this very week: “You could set Dublin anywhere in Europe and it would not be out of place.” And yet there are still quiet backwaters where you can imagine the city as it once was – horses, carts and carriages pulling up before Georgian and Victorian mansions. You just to need to use “Shanks’ pony” – your own feet – to wander down sidestreets which, bar the car, are unchanged.

Or try Belfast. Not as famous as its illustrious counterpart – or at least, famous for unfortunate reasons until recently – Belfast has a curious appeal, which sets it aside from Dublin, Cork, Limerick or Galway. Come now, before the transition is complete, because Belfast is changing – “before your very eyes, folks!” – from a run down late Victorian workshop to something which has not yet been defined.

Blessed with a magnificent natural setting between the hills of Antrim and Down, the journey up Belfast Lough by sea (ferries from Scotland and England) is one of the great natural approaches in Europe. And the movie connection will quietly pass you by, unless you know where to look. I was guiding a party of guests from the Crystal Symphony last week, and one of them commented – very reasonably, as it happens – on the wasteland and the old buildings across the river from their gleaming ship’s berth.

“Ah yes” said I, “but those two buildings mean more than you will know. The modern cube was once the paint hall, where pieces of supertanker were rustproofed before being wheeled across the road to be fitted into place in Harland and Wolff’s shipyard – that hall is now a film studio. The older building beside it is the only building for miles around which has been “listed” – it must be preserved for future generations. That grimy old brownstone was the drawing office for “The Yard”, from which came the plans for the Titanic, whose slipway has been saved from redevelopment.”

How odd to think that the last place where you would expect to get a real feel for a location is down amongst the rusting steam cranes and the cast off pipes of the old yard. The weeds in the drydock are as evocative as the sagebrush tumbling along the streets of Laredo. Go now. Use the new direct service from Newark to Belfast with Continental or fly via Dublin – it’s only 100 miles and 2 hours away. Don’t just see the city; feel it before the new IT offices and the waterside condos turn the Queen’s Island into the new beating heart of the workshop that is Belfast.

And if you want to turn the clock back and wake up to the Ireland that was; an Ireland that is vanishing like the morning mist, then go Achill on the west coast. I suggest that you stay in Bervie House, where Elizabeth and John Barrett will give you the real thing – hospitality at every turn.

But do not delay. I hear the sound of big yellow taxis in the distance and we are afraid that they are coming to take away the last traces of what makes this place special. Still, we can console ourselves that Ireland has not yet been the setting for Harry Potter – but if Ireland does not slow down its restless expansion, then it will soon be a case of “Gone with the Wand.” Enjoy.