Knowingly Undersold

Man, how many list mistakes did this moron make? Quite a few, junior! Some of these additional movies didn’t occur to me last summer, and some did but I hadn’t seen them in a while and didn’t rewatch them with the multiple dozen other films I saw in preparation for this undertaking. And so here we are, unspooling on weekends like badly supervised dads with court-ordered visitation rights! These films need their days in the sun, too! And so –

The Rising of the Moon (1957)

History largely disagrees with the poster’s declaration of this being John Ford’s finest film, but that is not to takeaway from this marvelously charming picture. Very much a companion piece to Ford’s The Quiet Man, this collection of Irish vignettes has a light, fun touch, featuring similarly good natured characters in mildly comic situations. While the capping sequence deals a condemned revolutionary’s attempts to escape his doom – replete with disguises and ballads galore – and is the obvious one to close the picture, the real highlight is the film’s middle section – the terrific “One Minute Wait,” dealing with a myriad of delayed train passengers. And as a bonus – movie star Tyrone Power introducing the segments!

It should come as no surprise that this was a favorite of my old man, and for years the only version I saw was a dingy VHS copy from television. In fact, The Rising of the Moon is the direct reason I ultimately got a burner – to copy this movie from television onto a disc, as it had never been properly released on DVD. I felt wholly accomplished and heroic in this move – even though it did get the modern home video release mere months later. Ah well! I tried!

Had it occurred to me, this movie would probably place around where we are now – maybe back a few days. I could see this residing around #353, just ahead of Jaws 2. Sorry, John Ford!