A timely St. Patrick's season item, filmmaker Christopher Kepple's short feature will be an eye-opener for viewers of modern Irish history, with its recounting of a prominent married couple in the early years of the Irish Free State, an author and an artist who crossed lines of politics and culture.
Ernie O'Malley was an Irish Republic Army member and a veteran of the famous 1916 Easter Rebellion in Dublin (perhaps best depicted by Hollywood in the Liam Neeson-starring biopic Michael Collins). Though riddled with British bullets, causing health issues for the rest of his life, the one-time medical student escaped a British prison and wound up in America. There he met an unlikely WASP love, Helen Hooker, a New England heiress being groomed by her family as a tennis pro.
Helen would rather be an artist, and she used O'Malley as a model for her sculpted heads. Later, in an around-the-world assignation and elopement, she reunited with him and they married in London in 1935.
Ernie and Helen were both captivated by photography. Supported by the wealth of Helen's family, the two documented the Irish landscape, villages, and cities throughout the 1930s and 40s. It is a bittersweet moment halfway through to learn the fairy-tale marriage soured after WWII, as Helen grew homesick for the USA. She fled back across the Atlantic, taking two of their children (Ernie practically kidnapped their youngest son, Cormac, to keep him in Eire).
Not long after the divorce, Ernie died at 59 in 1957, having published a number of books. Even as she remarried, Helen became a sort of curator of Ernie O'Malley's legacy and nation; she would return to Ireland, sculpt the notables of Hibernian society, oversee exhibitions and events, and she adopted Kodachrome slide film for capturing an emerging Ireland of the 1960s and 70s.
Kepple's camera speaks to collaborators and friends of the couple, plus their three grown children. Cormac has compiled volumes of his father's archives and letters, and it should be no surprise that all the Irish interviewees are fine storytellers. Aye, much early detail seems to be glossed over or left out (politics, intrigues, and feuds over the Irish struggle for Independence were Byzantine and volatile indeed; Ernie O'Malley would face lawsuits over his memoirs), and in this milieu, the Irish Republic Army is upheld as freedom fighters—never terrorists. But the artistic side of Ireland is often marginalized by the dismal chronicles of bombings, killings, and reprisals, and this documentary fills a vital niche.
What public library shelves would this title be on?
Libraries and institutions with a large local Irish-American population would be ideal auld sod. Shelves tilting toward art (especially sculpture and photography) should also find much interest.
What academic subjects would this film be suitable for?
Irish/UK/European modern history, plus art history, could make good use of the title, whose just-under-an-hour length is ideal for the average classroom.
What type of classroom would this documentary resource be suitable for?
High-school level viewers on up should enjoy the presentation, which tells its saga at a brisk pace.