Since Ford’s father was born in Co Galway and his mother on the island of Inishmore, and since this is such an enjoyable piece of nonsense, he gets a pass for this depiction of the country as a nation of loveable, blarney-spouting, brawling drunks.

The Quiet Man is John Ford's best picture since The Informer, but much, much funnier.

As much an anthropological adventure as a romantic rhapsody.

No other John Ford movie provides me with as much pure pleasure -- and leaves a perpetual grin on my mug -- as the Irish-American director’s ode to his family’s ancestral country.