Shamrocks & Shillelaghs: Screen gems from the Emerald Isle
(CBS) A taste of Ireland can be as close as your DVD shelf, local video store or online movie-streaming service.
Over the years, a number of films have used Ireland and Irish themes to tell stories on the silver screen.
For example, you can see Daniel Day-Lewis in his Oscar-winning performance as Irish artist and writer Christy Brown in 1989's "My Left Foot." Or, you can hear the 2008 Oscar-winning song, "Falling Slowly," in the movie "Once" - a modern day musical set on the streets of Dublin starring Glen Hansard from the Irish band "The Frames."
Here are some others:
- "The Informer" (1935): Victor McLaglen won an Oscar as a down-and-out Irish rebel who rats out a friend to collect a 20-pound reward.
- "Odd Man Out" (1947): Director Carol Reed (The Third Man) spins a taut tale of a really bad day for Irish rebels. James Mason stars.
- "The Quiet Man" (1952): John Ford's classic stars John Wayne as a Yankee boxing champion in Ireland who romances a fierce-tempered redhead (Maureen O'Hara).
- "Cal" (1984): A young IRA volunteer (John Lynch) falls for an older woman (Helen Mirren) whose husband, a Protestant policeman, he helped to kill.
- "The Dead" (1987): John Huston's last film stars his daughter Anjelica in a sumptuous adaptation of James Joyce's Dublinersstory.
- "My Left Foot" (1989): Oscars went to Daniel Day-Lewis and Brenda Fricker for the story of Irish artist and writer Christy Brown, afflicted by cerebral palsy. Jim Sheridan served as the director.
- "Miller's Crossing" (1990): Joel and Ethan Coen's film stars Gabriel Byrne as an Irish-American mobster in a war with Italian newcomers. It features the best Tommy gun scene ever set to Danny Boy.
- "The Field" (1990): Richard Harris is a raging-bull Irishman in a bidding war over a piece of turf.
- "Hear My Song" (1991): A gem starring Ned Beatty as Irish tenor Josef Locke, a tax exile from England who sneaks into London for a concert.
- "The Commitments" (1991), "The Snapper" (1993), "The Van" (1996): A comic trefoil of Dublin films, based on Roddy Doyle's Barrytown trilogy, feature Colm Meaney as a blustering patriarch. "The Commitments" is about a Dublin soul band, "The Snapper" follows an unwed daughter's pregnancy, and "The Van" tells the tale of a doomed fish-and-chips business.
- "The Crying Game" (1992): This terrifically convoluted movie describes an IRA man (Stephen Rea) who befriends his British hostage (Forest Whitaker) then romances his lover. And there's a plot jolt midway through.
- "In the Name of the Father" (1993): Director Jim Sheridan and Daniel Day-Lewis reunite for this gripping story about a Belfast man falsely imprisoned for terrorism.
- "Into the West" (1993): This dark fable describes two brothers whose journey across Ireland on a mythical white horse heals their shattered family. Gabriel Byrne and Ellen Barkin star.
- "The Secret of Roan Inish" (1994): Director John Sayles sails into the mystical with this story of a girl sent to live with grandparents amid seals, seabirds, fish and folklore in coastal Ireland.
- "Michael Collins" (1996): Neil Jordan's biopic of Ireland's "Big Fella," who waged guerrilla warfare against the British. Liam Neeson and Julia Roberts star.
- "Some Mother's Son" (1996): Helen Mirren is the mother of an inmate who joins IRA hunger strikes in the early 1980s.
- "The Boxer" (1997): Daniel Day-Lewis and Emily Watson appear in the engrossing story of an ex-IRA member who takes up with an old flame after years in prison.
- "Waking Ned Devine" (1998): Conniving Irishmen try to collect their dead buddy's lottery winnings.
- "Dancing at Lughnasa" (1998): This sweet take on family resilience stars Meryl Streep as one of five Irish sisters.
- "Agnes Browne" (1999): Anjelica Houston plays a woman who is thrown into emotional and financial crisis after the death of her husband in 1967 Dublin.
- "Angela's Ashes" (1999): Based on Frank McCourt's memoir about growing up poor in Limerick, Ireland.
- "Nora" (2000): Ewan McGregor stars as Irish author James Joyce in this film about his relationship with wife Nora Barnacle (played by Susan Lynch).
- "Evelyn" (2002): Pierce Brosnan plays an unemployed father fighting to be reunited with his three children after they are placed in orphanages.
- "Intermission" (2003): Cillian Murphy, Kelly Macdonald and Colin Farrell star in this story of intersecting lives and loves, set in Dublin.
- "Veronica Guerin" (2003): Cate Blanchett plays the titular Irish journalist, whose investigation into the drug trade led to her murder in 1996.
- "Rory O'Shea was Here" (2004): James McAvoy and Stephen Robinson star as two disabled men who strike up a friendship and together pursue emotional and physical independence.
- "Breakfast on Pluto" (2005): Cillian Murphy plays a transgender orphan searching for love and her long-lost mother in small town Ireland and London in the 1970s.
- "Once" (2006): A modern-day musical about a busker and an immigrant in Dublin, as they write and record songs that tell their love story.
- "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" (2006): Set during the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) and the Irish Civil War (1922-1923), two County Cork brothers (Cillian Murphy and Teddy O'Donovan) join the IRA to fight for Irish independence from the United Kingdom.
- "Ondine" (2009): An Irish fisherman (Colin Farrell) discovers a woman in his fishing net who he believes to be a water nymph.
- "Leap Year" (2010) A woman (Amy Adams) schemes to propose to her boyfriend in Dublin on Leap Day, inspired by an Irish tradition of leap-year proposals by women.