This book brings together the fruits of more than a decade of research into a field of inquiry the author has made largely his own. Other scholars have of course contributed pioneering work on the history of Irish cinema and film and there is likewise a small, if burgeoning, literature on the development of the relationship between sport and media in Ireland, yet Seán Crossan has, in the course of a series of journal articles and book chapters, been singular in his sustained exploration of the subject-matter that provides the focus of this book – Irish sport's representation on the cinema screen through the prism of Gaelic games. In drawing together and building upon previously published work, this chronologically-structured monograph straddles a time frame of more than a century and encompasses a range of film formats: newsreel, documentary, instructional film and screen fiction.
The result is impressive – a book informed by highly original research, its handsome presentation enhanced by the inclusion of publicity posters, press advertisements and still-frame images that complement an accessibly written text. The earliest surviving footage of Gaelic games is a clip of a mere one minute, forty-nine seconds duration that was recorded by the Irish Animated Picture Company on the occasion of the 1914 All-Ireland football final replay and Crossan skilfully mines this material for what it reveals about the distinctive character of the game and rituals around it at that particular point in its evolution.
Throughout the book Crossan proves a close and astute reader of actuality and fiction film narratives, using them as a springboard for an intriguing interrogation of how Gaelic games – and, for that matter, Ireland and Irish identity – was at once portrayed abroad and understood at home. Crucially, for much of the inter-war period, the great mass of G.A.A.-focused films emerged not from indigenous producers but from international newsreel companies.
Sport was a mainstay of how these companies chose to represent Ireland, though, as Crossan's evidence confirms, Gaelic games were neither a principal obsession nor an unproblematic one. On such occasions when British Pathé covered Gaelic games, for instance, they were generally depicted in a positive manner; however, other Anglo-American newsreel companies and film-producers were not always so generous, preferring to play up the violent potential of hurling in particular, the better to burnish established Irish stereotypes.
In weighing up the influence of these externally-mediated portrayals, it is worth bearing in mind that, much like sport, cinema-going was itself a social phenomenon in mid-twentieth-century Ireland. While one G.A.A. journalist saw fit to denounce those cinemas as ‘chain-houses of de-nationalising influence and Imperial propaganda’, the association adopted – with reservations – a more benign view, routinely facilitating access to their grounds and games to foreign film-makers, most notably for the movie Rooney when actor John Gregson was permitted to walk in the pre-match parade of teams prior to the 1957 All-Ireland hurling final.
If, in their depictions of Ireland and Irishness, such films suffered from the application of the ‘tourist gaze’, a corrective came in the post-Emergency era when indigenous producers emerged in the form of the National Film Institute and Gael Linn, the contribution of the latter extending to the production of two landmark coaching films, and coverage of venues and matches beyond the major Croke Park showpieces.
Amidst the variety of this indigenously-produced offering, there was a certain consistency of message that Gaelic games were not just popular pastimes; they were also intrinsic to a narrowly-defined Irish identity and a conservative, Catholic social order. What Crossan calls a ‘critical turn’ came in the 1960s, announced by Peter Lennon's seminal Rocky road to Dublin (1967) documentary which deployed the G.A.A. as a device not to bolster but to critique that very social order. While Lennon's film, together with Peter Tighe's drama Clash of ash (1987), are held up as exemplars of a critical, post-nationalist engagement by film-makers with G.A.A.-related material, a striking take-away from Crossan's critique of the most recent representations of Gaelic games – encompassing genres as diverse as horror and historically-rooted drama – is the extent to which the familiar associations with nationalism, identity and violence recur.
Such continuities beg questions as to how far the latest on-screen representations reflect or diverge from a reality where complexity and change have been hallmarks of the G.A.A. experience. To point up that those questions are not comprehensively addressed in this book is not a criticism. Rather it is to acknowledge Seán Crossan's achievement in beating a previously untrammelled path where such questions can now begin to be asked. Gaelic games on film will deservedly win a wide readership: it is a book that practitioners of several disciplines will draw from and build upon, and it is one against which future explorations of Irish sport on film will be undoubtedly measured.
