Ahhh St Patrick's Day. How I love you!
Growing up St. Patrick's Day rivaled and maybe even surpassed Thanksgiving. It involved traditional American-Irish fare (Corned beef and Cabbage aren't Irish but American Irish if you didn't know. I'll share more about that the day I discuss food), movies, music lots of drinking and plenty of green punch. It was an awesome holiday devoid of a lot of the normal holiday trapping such as gifts etc.
When I grew up (or at least moved out of the house) it became important to me to have my own St. Patrick's Day celebration, especially since no school seemed excited to give me a St. Patrick's Day break to rival Thanksgiving break. I tried to start out small but it usually involved forcing all my roommates and close friends and neighbors to try corned beef and cabbage and green punch etc. It was marvelous.
Of course, as mentioned before, food is not the only necessity to a great St. Patrick's Day Celebration. Movies are key. Especially if you are like me and still haven't really gotten the timing of cooking dinner down quite right (I usually end up with something done a good hour ahead of schedule- probably the something that will melt- and quite a few things not done when everyone arrives). This is 100% necessary if you have had to strongly encourage people to be there or the celebration involves ANY children.
So I will help you. These are in no particular order, except Quiet Man being the best by far at #1.
Here is a list of my favorite St. Patrick's Day movies:
*I'm just going to take the descriptions off IMDB but will add comments where necessary*
1. The Quiet Man
Sean Thornton(John Wayne) has returned from America to reclaim his homestead and escape his past. Sean's eye is caught by Mary Kate Danaher(Maureen O'Hara), a beautiful but poor maiden, and younger sister of ill-tempered "Red" Will Danaher. The riotous relationship that forms between Sean and Mary Kate, punctuated by Will's pugnacious attempts to keep them apart, form the main plot, with Sean's past as the dark undercurrent.
This movie is an absolute must. I mean it has John Wayne playing a feisty American-raised Irish man. Maureen O'Hara is feisty and beautiful and the side characters are hilarious. Plus it has a freakishly long, good old-fashioned fight scene.
2. Darby O'Gill and the Little People
In the enchanted Emerald Isle, Darby O'Gill spins tall tales of leprechauns and banshees. Unfortunately, when he actually captures the leprechaun king and discovers their hidden gold, no one will believe him!
This was my favorite kids movie for St. Patty's Day. Scary banshees, leprechauns and Sean Connery: how could anything go wrong?
3. Waking Ned Divine
When word reaches two elderly best friends that someone in their tiny Irish village has won the national lottery, they go to great lengths to find the winner so they can share the wealth. When they discover the "lucky" winner, Ned Devine, they find he has died of shock upon discovering his win. Not wanting the money to go to waste, the village enters a pact to pretend Ned is still alive by having another man pose as him, and then to divide the money between them.
I actually don't really remember watching this one growing up. I saw it in college and loved it. Feisty Irish people!
4. The Secret of Roan Inish
10-year-old Fiona is sent to live with her grandparents in a small fishing village in Donegal, Ireland. She soon learns the local legend that an ancestor of hers married a Selkie - a seal who can turn into a human. Years earlier, her baby brother washed out to sea in a cradle shaped like a boat; someone in the family believes the boy is being raised by the seals. Then Fiona catches sight of a naked little boy on the abandoned Isle of Roan Inish and takes an active role in uncovering The Secret of Roan Inish.
Yea for Selkies! Beautiful coastal scenes of Ireland and a fairy tale feel.
5. The Commitments
Jimmy Rabbitte, just a tick out of school, gets a brilliant idea: to put a soul band together in Barrytown, his slum home in north Dublin. First he needs musicians and singers: things slowly start to click when he finds three fine-voiced females virtually in his back yard, a lead singer (Deco) at a wedding, and, responding to his ad, an aging trumpet player, Joey "The Lips" Fagan. Song by song, gig by gig, the Commitments start their climb to the top: Dublin gets soul. But internal strife also builds: Deco is insufferable, Joey's a Casanova, and Jimmy may lack the seasoning to hold things together. Will the Commitments slip away?
Maybe the first grown-up movie on my list. Some language etc but awesome music and tons of fun.
6. Finian's Rainbow
A mysterious Irishman, Finian, and his beautiful daughter Sharon, arrive one day in Rainbow Valley, a small Southern town of tobacco sharecroppers in the mythical state of Missitucky. The town has its own resident dreamer, Woody Mahoney, who thinks that he might be able to put the town on the map by crossing mint with tobacco so that it'll grow already mentholated. Finian's come to the town because he's stolen a leprechaun's crock of gold and plans to plant it in the ground so it'll grow faster (or else why would the Americans have rushed to dig the gold out of California only to plant it back in the ground at Fort Knox?). But trouble arrives in the form of Og the leprechaun, who has followed Finian to America and is bent on retrieving his gold. Meanwhile, the bigoted Senator Billboard Rawkins, in an effort to stop progress in his state in the form of a new dam and hydroelectric system, plans to take the remaining parcel of land needed to stop the project - Woody's, which Finian has purchased to save from the auctioneer's gavel. But then the government's geologists reveal to the Senator that gold has been detected on the property! Rawkins and his men confront the sharecroppers to seize their land using as an excuse an obscure law making it a felony for blacks and whites to live together, but when Sharon, outraged at this bigotry, cries out while standing right over the pot of gold, "I wish to God you were black ..." all hell breaks loose as wishes come true.
How to teach your kids to love the Irish, hate greed and be disgusted by racism. Stars Fred Astaire.
Honorable Mention:
Far and Away
A young man (Cruise) leaves Ireland with his landlord's daughter (Kidman) after some trouble with her father, and they dream of owning land at the big giveaway in Oklahoma ca. 1893. When they get to the new land, they find jobs and begin saving money. The man becomes a local barehands boxer, and rides in glory until he is beaten, then his employers steal all the couple's money and they must fight off starvation in the winter, and try to keep their dream of owning land alive. Meanwhile, the woman's parents find out where she has gone and have come to America to find her and take her back.
This one doesn't concentrate as much on Ireland itself but the American-Irish. But full of a young, hot Tom Cruise.
Around the time I was 15 I was telling my Dad of how I was afraid of the Mad Hatter and Tom Petty, and how they were somehow linked in my mind. I thought this was just some weird quirk caused by my history of very vivid, crazy dreams. I learned otherwise- Tom Petty has a music video in which he plays the Mad Hatter, who cuts up Alice and eats her like a cake. Hence, my being traumatized for years.
