AllMovie

Director Peter Flynn explores the evolution of cinematic representations of the Irish and Ireland in early American cinema in this documentary that sheds new light on the Irish-American saga. From the early years of cinema in the late 19th Century through the emergence of the Hollywood system in 1917, crude Paddy and Bridget stereotypes gradually gave way to a more positive representation of Irish culture on the big screen. But that change didn't come easy; it was only due to the vocal protests of an increasingly powerful and influential class of Irish-Americans that degrading images of the surly Hibernian laborer and the dim-witted maid were replaced with images that better-reflected the realities of upwardly mobile Irish-America. Over the course of the next three decades, Hollywood's image of the Irish would undergo a profound transformation. Interviews with film scholars, archivists, Irish-American writers, historians, and filmmakers combine with never-before-seen archival footage to illuminate a largely unknown chapter of American film history and offer a new perspective on Irish-American history.