Best movie ever!

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

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.

John Ford won his fourth and last Best Director Oscar (the film also won for its Color Cinematography) for this, another successful pairing of John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, whose famous face slapping attempt is featured in TCM & Chuck Workman's 100 Years at the Movies (1994) short. She broke her hand when Wayne blocked her blow, and had to act in the rest of the movie without a cast!This part comedy, part romance drama includes an excellent supporting cast: Barry Fitzgerald, Ward Bond, Mildred Natwick, and Victor McLaglen (who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar), among others. The film, co-produced by Ford and Merian C. Cooper was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Screenplay (Frank Nugent's only Academy recognition, for adapting Maurice Walsh's story), Color Art Direction-Set Decoration, and Sound (Daniel Bloomberg's last film). #76 on AFI's 100 Greatest Love Stories list. Added to the National Film Registry in 2013.Wayne plays American boxer Sean Thornton, who's returned home to Ireland. He falls for the beautiful red-headed lass Mary Kate Danaher (O'Hara), whose brother Squire 'Red' Will Danaher (McLaglen) isn't so keen on Sean. In fact, the two have fighting words that eventually lead to an extended brawl, which covers a lot of ground and is followed by cheering members of the community. Fitzgerald plays one of these, Michaleen Oge Flynn, while Bond plays Father Peter Lonergan.

A friend recommended this movie to me this week. I find the movie sort of snuck up on me... 50 minutes in I wasn't that into it, I found it cute but a bit meandering... but it was immersing me into a way of life and seeing the world... until I began to really understand these characters intimately and care about them, for good and bad, warts and all... So many great moments, I love when the man says "saddle his horse he says!" and starts humming the music to come in the very next scene... I saw another movie do that not long ago, but can't remember what it is, no matter, then Maureen jumps a little obstacle course on the way back home ;) Or during the fight at the end when the bucket just keeps getting bigger and bigger throughout the course of the fight until they look like they're fighting in a flood. Maureen O'hara truly is the best thing about this movie, her power as an actress was undeniable. John Wayne is more looks than great acting ability. What an extraordinarily brilliant film.

The movie was adapted from Maurice Walsh's short story. If you have read it, then you'd immediately have found out that the whole movie was cast with absolutely wrong cast, John Wayne was not in the least as what the short story had portrayed as the man, Sean Thornton, not even close in 100 miles.Sean Thornton, in the story, was indeed a very quiet man, a professional boxer retired from New York boxing ring, seeking an even quieter retirement life back to his hometown in Ireland. He was a tough guy, very reserved and at the same time very humble but with a very strong mind and will.But the screenplay writer and the director, John Ford, had messed up the whole lot and changed it into a farce-like light-heart comedy. It lost the depth of the great short story with a very deep and profound atmosphere which made the short story kind of memorable and an instant classic."The Quiet Man" and "The Most Dangerous Game" are the two most famous and modern classic, the reasons why both of these two short stories had become so great was the unbelievable and unbearable tension in both. Yet the movie of "The Quiet Man" was a loud, noisy, skin-deep shallow comedy without essence at all.Victor McLaglen who played the Squire 'Red' Will Danaher, was definitely another wrong cast. In the story, the guy was a very tough, dark, stubborn, self-righteous, and dangerous, an egoist and willful strong minded tough guy. But the movie had transformed him into a half wit redneck-like thug. So with both important and memorable characters that made the short story so great had been molested into two shallow guys, Sean Thornton had become a loud mouth, always with an ironic sneering smile on his face guy, also a bit too old for the leading role. Squire 'Red', just a countryside rustic roughneck. Neither of them got something special.Maureen O'Hara, who played Mary Kate Danaher, was the only cast that was kinda close to what portrayed in the short story. But in the messy shallow movie, totally ruined by the two wrong male characters, lousy directing and a deep drama-like great storyline messed up into a half farce, half comedy, only one of the cast was barely okay, would not turned this pathetic movie around into a much greater and more memorable one.