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78 Michael Collins: Treaty Makers and Filmmakers Séamas McSwiney / 1996 From Film West 26 (Autumn 1996): 10–16. Reprinted by permission of the author. Michael Collins is, or will be, a successful film on at least three levels. Firstly, it is a fine “historical movie” in the sense that it makes historians of us all. It provokes a spontaneous desire to go to the bookshelves to check the facts as they are presented in the film and to investigate the omissions. Whatever Tim Pat Coogan may feel about the historical inaccuracies , he will not be able to complain about the renewed commercial success of his Collins biography. Read the book, see the film, and check the book again. Go further and cross-check with Frank O’Connor’s book. The dry discipline of historians will become both fashionable and fascinating! Secondly, the film itself will be a commercial success internationally because it tells a compelling story and tells it well. I’d wondered if this condensed version of Irish history might not be too much for non-Irish audiences but there’s enough to hang on to for entertainment buffs. Along with the historical content, it has all the action , emotion, and passion of popular movie drama. Some journalists express reserve and critics may occupy an aesthetic high ground, evoking their disappointment at the film’s classic linear narrative, but the audiences and especially the jury in Venice belie these fears. Add to this Warner Bros.’ commercial expertise and the movie is short odds for success . Thirdly, and most intriguingly, it’s a success with the Tory press and opinion. Having feared the worst, they were extremely relieved that the British got off so lightly in the film. We see the 1916 executions that are an ingrained part of our martyr ethos and we get a taste of the “Tans,” but none of this is dwelled on in any indulgent depth. Unfortunately, séamas mcswiney / 1996 79 we never get a crack at Winston Churchill, a prime candidate for sophisticated movie villainy, not even a whiff of his cigar. But, as Neil Jordan explains, that was not the film he wanted to make. He wanted to make a film about Mick and Dev. This explains the palpable relief emanating from Fleet Street, Murdochville , and Westminster. However, there will still be some hack-attacks on this level, like for instance, the London journalist (it’s not important to name him here), who, like some lone sniper, went off to Venice without reading the latest dispatches from HQ. At the packed press conference , he pulled out the old chestnut whereby such films rattle the collecting tins of IRA fund-raisers in the U.S., “where ignorance on the Irish question is bottomless.” He went on to evoke the film’s “failure to give any kind of sympathetic portrayal of the British dilemma or of the position of the Protestant minority in the North of Ireland.” Neil Jordan answered in a reasoned way and when the journalist persisted in his credo of American ignorance, Jordan replied sharply that it was “kind of an insult to Americans in general to presume that they are a bottomless pit of ignorance about any event . . .”! This provoked a spontaneous burst of applause, led presumably by the contingent of American journalists responsible for informing their public. The newsman in question would have saved himself some embarrassment had he consulted the elders of his tribe, like Quentin Curtis of the Telegraph or, our favorite, Alexander Walker of the Evening Standard. Curtis is very enthusiastic about the film and, while regretting certain omissions, regards the notion of Michael Collins (the film) being a pro-IRA film as “an absurd leap.” He also seems enamored of Michael Collins (the man) and even justifies to a certain extent Collins’s violent choices. Curtis coyly quotes a British signatory of the treaty, who recalled Collins as being “full of fascination and charm . . . one of the most courageous leaders ever produced by a valiant race,” before revealing, like a talented screenwriter, that the words were of David Lloyd George. Equally jubilant, but in a stranger way, Alexander Walker had led the chorus of approval. He savors with relish the anecdotal anti-Brit quips and, both rightly and righteously, he condemns the Black and Tans as being the dregs of WWI trenches (let’s not dwell on who sent them!). He isolates the factual inaccuracies in the representation of the Croke Park shootings, not...

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