“‘It's a nice soft night,' says Barry Fitzgerald, town marriage-broker, bet-maker and busy-body, ‘so I think I'll join my comrades and talk a little treason.' Between that line and what may be the greatest (and must be the funniest) fistfight ever committed to film lies The Quiet Man - John Ford's most deeply-felt, lyrical portrait of his beloved Ireland. Frank S. Nugent wrote the script, which revolves around an American ex-prize fighter (John Wayne) who returns to the land of his birth to buy back the family cottage and marry a tempestuous Irishwoman (Maureen O'Hara). The tension between Wayne's America and O'Hara's Ireland provides the film with its cutting edge, but its heart is in the characters - Victor McLaglen as Maureen's pugnacious brother, Mildred Natwick as the widow he loves, Barry Fitzgerald, Ward Bond, Arthur Shields, Francis Ford and the rest of the Fordian company - plus supporting performances by the best of Dublin's Abbey Theater players. The Quiet Man is one of Ford's loveliest films - not least for the breath-taking Technicolor photography of the Irish countryside. Rich in folklore and offhand sociology, laced with bawdy comedy and even a bit of sex, it's Ford's sweetest love story.”