Poitín (film)
| Poitín | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Bob Quinn |
| Produced by | Bob Quinn |
| Written by | Colm Bairéad |
| Starring |
Cyril Cusack Donal McCann Niall Toibin |
| Cinematography | Seamus Deasy |
| Edited by | Bob Quinn |
| Distributed by | Cine Gael |
Release dates | 1977 |
Running time | 65 minutes |
| Country | Ireland |
| Language | Irish |
Poitín (1977) was the first feature film to be made entirely in Irish. It was also the first recipient of a film script grant from the Arts Council of Ireland.
Plot
The film was produced by Cinegael, written and directed by Bob Quinn, and starred Cyril Cusack as a moonshiner in rural Connemara, living in an isolated cottage with his adult daughter. Two local degenerates, played by Donal McCann and Niall Tóibín, terrorize the old moonshiner for his contraband liquor (poitín), threatening to kill him and rape his daughter, until the moonshiner outwits them and tricks them to their deaths.
Response
The film first aired to the Irish public on RTÉ Television on Saint Patrick's Day in 1979 and caused a national outrage. Taken by many as a direct insult to the idealized Western Irish identity, particularly pointing to the "spud fight" scene in the film, criticism echoed the response to John Millington Synge's stageplay The Playboy of the Western World (the "Playboy Riots") some seventy years earlier and the reaction to Brian O'Nolan's Irish language novel An Béal Bocht some forty years prior, both of which also played on Irish stereotypes, to which Irish nationalists are sensitive.