Ireland a Nation

Ireland a Nation is a 1914 silent film directed, written and produced by Walter MacNamara, telling the history of Ireland between 1798 and 1914.[1][2]

Ireland a Nation
Directed byWalter MacNamara
Written byWalter MacNamara
Produced byWalter MacNamara
StarringBarry O'Brien
Patrick Ennis
Dominick Reilly
Barney Magee
P J Bourke
Fred O’Donovan
Production
company
MacNamara Feature Film Company
Distributed byT A Sparling
Gaelic Film Company
Release dates
22 September 1914 (United States)
8 January 1917 (Ireland)
Running time
52 minutes
CountriesUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
LanguagesSilent film
English intertitles

Plot

The film depicts major political events in Ireland between 1798 and 1914, including the 1798 Rebellion, the 1800 Act of Union, the 1803 Rebellion of Robert Emmet, Catholic Emancipation, the Great Famine and the Home Rule movement.

It takes several liberties with history; most notably, Father John Murphy (executed in 1798) is shown reacting to the 1800 Act of Union; Anne Devlin is depicted as the wife of Michael Dwyer, when they were cousins and not romantically involved; and Robert Emmet is shown speaking with Napoleon, when that meeting is not thought to have occurred.[3]

Production

Ireland a Nation was filmed on 35 mm.[4] Production was financed by Emmett Moore. Filming took place in summer 1914 on location in Ireland and at Kew Bridge Studios in Twickenham.[1]

Release

Ireland a Nation was premiered in the U.S. on 23 September 1914. It received poor reviews but was very popular with Irish Americans, running for 20 weeks in Chicago.[5][6] In May 1915 a copy was sent to Great Britain aboard the RMS Lusitania, which was sunk by a German submarine off Ireland.[7][8]

The film received a Press Censor's Certificate in December 1916, although some scenes had to be cut and intertitles rewritten. It went on release in Ireland on 8 January 1917 at the Rotunda Picture House, Dublin, just 8 months after the Easter Rising. It was shut down by military order just two days after, apparently because the audience were deemed to be too pleased by certain scenes, such as the killing of British soldiers.[9][10]

It was reissued in 1920 with additional material covering the intervening years. This new edition was first shown in Ireland in January 1922.

The film only survives in part, with 34 minutes of dramatised footage and 8 minutes of actuality footage surviving; the entire first reel is lost.[3]

See also

References
  1. "Emmet on film". 22 February 2013.
  2. Rockett, Kevin; Hill, John (5 December 2004). National Cinema and Beyond. Four Courts. ISBN 9781851828739 – via Google Books.
  3. "Irish Silent Films - Trinity College Dublin".
  4. "Ireland, a Nation (1914) - IMDb" – via www.imdb.com.
  5. Slide, Anthony (15 June 2015). A Special Relationship: Britain Comes to Hollywood and Hollywood Comes to Britain. Univ. Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9781628460889 – via Google Books.
  6. "'Ireland, a Nation' film banned | Century Ireland". www.rte.ie.
  7. ""The identity of an Irish cinema" - Dr. Harvey O'Brien" (PDF).
  8. Hill, J. R. (26 August 2010). A New History of Ireland Volume VII: Ireland, 1921-84. OUP Oxford. ISBN 9780191615597 – via Google Books.
  9. The Irish Times (Thursday, January 11, 1917)
  10. Hill, John (7 May 2019). A Companion to British and Irish Cinema. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9781118482834 – via Google Books.
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