Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 15, 1991 TAG: 9103150179
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
For sports fans, it's the advent of baseball.
For fishermen, the first day of trout season.
For gardeners, the appearance of onion sets and seed potatoes down at the local hardware.
For even the most casual nature lover, the sighting of the first robin.
And for movie enthusiasts, the broadcast of twin classics on the tube.
As each spring nears, "The Quiet Man" and "The Wizard of Oz" return just like the forsythia and the crocus. "The Quiet Man" airs Sunday at 10:35 a.m. on Channel 17 and at noon on WGN. "The Wizard of Oz" will air Tuesday at 8 p.m. on Channel 7.
The reason for the timing of the broadcast of "The Quiet Man" is obvious. It is perhaps the most Irish movie of all time, and it logically corresponds to Saint Patrick's Day.
The reasoning behind the appearance of "The Wizard of Oz" at this time is less obvious. It's a family picture presented as a holiday treat for youngsters and Oz admirers of all ages, though there's nothing to tie it overtly to Easter.
Still, few movies are more appropriate to the spring season in terms of visual symbolism. "The Wizard of Oz" begins in bleak, winter-like black and white, then bursts into dazzling color when Dorothy lands in Oz. I like to think that this somehow counted in the annual scheduling of the movie.
"Oz" and "The Quiet Man" may be two of the greenest movies ever, lush depictions of the Emerald City and the Emerald Isle.
Movie reviewers are often asked about their favorite movies and I generally find myself picking these two. People generally look surprised. It's an instinctive reply, one generally qualified by adding that the two are sentimental favorites.
They're movies that have never lost their appeal after repeated viewings, dreamlike travelogues of magical places that I never seem to tire of.
"The Quiet Man" is John Ford's gushy love letter to his Irish homeland. It transcends reality. The hills are greener, the cottages whiter, the characters more colorful, the passions more intense than in any real geographic spot on the map. Irish Republican Army revolutionaries and protestant ministers coexist in harmony. Feuds and romance and humor are all on an Olympian scale. Homeric, as Barry Fitzgerald says at one point in the movie.
John Wayne plays a troubled American prizefighter who journeys to his mother's Irish village and discovers the home fires of his soul. It's a story of rebirth, a Celtic paean to the end of one man's spiritual winter.
In "The Wizard of Oz," Judy Garland is a heartbreakingly innocent Dorothy. After journeying to a land of enchantment, she discovers that her heart's home isn't the verdant land of Oz, but the dusty Kansas farmstead she once wanted to flee.
Both movies are cinematic fairy tales of infinite charm that create a terrain worth returning to time and again.
by CNB