Illustrated with interviews with Gabriel Byrne, Liam Neeson, Pierce Brosnan, Stephen Rea, Aidan Quinn and Patrick Bergin.

Based on new archival sources, 'Hollywood Irish' traces the life stories of the Irish actors who migrated to Hollywood in the 1930s. It shows how signifying elements of the Irish revival were personally carried into 'golden age' cinema, and gives fresh readings to some of the great movies of the era.

This is an exploration of the representation of Ireland and the Irish in British and US cinemas, as well as Irish-made films. The book offers readings of a wide range of key films such as The Butcher Boy (1997), Patriot Games (1992) and Angela's Ashes (1999). It discusses the full range of Irish cinematic productions from the low-budget work of Comerford and Breathnach, to the bigger Hollywood productions like Ron Howard's Far and Away (1992), and looks at the 'second' cinema of directors such as Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan where medium-sized budgets allow for greater creative control in Ireland. Feeding into wider debates about national and cultural identity, post-national cinema and the role of the state, the book provides an overview of how a relatively small film culture such as Ireland's can live successfully in the shadow of Hollywood.

Here, Shannon guides readers through a number of classic films from the 1930s and a T40s and investigates why films featuring Irish American characters were so popular among American audiences during a period when the Irish were still stereotyped and scorned for their religion.

In the 1990s, Irish society was changing and becoming increasingly international due to the rise of the 'Celtic Tiger'. At the same time, the ongoing peace process in Northern Ireland also fuelled debates on the definition of Irishness, which in turn seemed to call for a critical examination of the birth of the Irish State, as well as a rethinking and re-assessment of the nationalist past. Neil Jordan's Michael Collins (1996), the most commercially successful and talked-about Irish film of the 1990s, was a timely contributor to this process. In providing a large-scale representation of the 1916-1922 period, Michael Collins became the subject of critical and popular controversy, demonstrating that cinema could play a part in this cultural reimagining of Ireland. Locating the film in both its historical and its cinematic context, this book explores the depiction of events in Michael Collins and the film's participation in the process of reimagining Irishness through its public reception. The portrayal of the key figures of Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera comes under special scrutiny as the author assesses this pivotal piece of Irish history on screen.

This study is the first of its kind to analyse the representation of Irish English in film. Using a corpus of 50 films, ranging from John Ford's The Informer (1935) to Lenny Abrahamson's Garage (2007), the author examines the extent to which Irish English grammatical, discourse and lexical features are present in the films and provides a qualitative analysis of the accents in these works. The authenticity of the language is called into question and discussed in relation to the phenomenon of the Stage Irishman.

A stimulating overview of the intellectual arguments and critical debates involved in the study of British and Irish cinemas British and Irish film studies have expanded in scope and depth in recent years, prompting a growing number of critical debates on how these cinemas are analysed, contextualized, and understood. A Companion to British and Irish Cinema addresses arguments surrounding film historiography, methods of textual analysis, critical judgments, and the social and economic contexts that are central to the study of these cinemas. Twenty-nine essays from many of the most prominent writers in the field examine how British and Irish cinema have been discussed, the concepts and methods used to interpret and understand British and Irish films, and the defining issues and debates at the heart of British and Irish cinema studies. Offering a broad scope of commentary, the Companion explores historical, cultural and aesthetic questions that encompass over a century of British and Irish film studies—from the early years of the silent era to the present-day. Divided into five sections, the Companion discusses the social and cultural forces shaping British and Irish cinema during different periods, the contexts in which films are produced, distributed and exhibited, the genres and styles that have been adopted by British and Irish films, issues of representation and identity, and debates on concepts of national cinema at a time when ideas of what constitutes both ‘British’ and ‘Irish’ cinema are under question. A Companion to British and Irish Cinema is a valuable and timely resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of film, media, and cultural studies, and for those seeking contemporary commentary on the cinemas of Britain and Ireland.