SUMMARY:

MISE ÉIRE opens with images of pre-photographic representations of sculpture and graphic artists, including the meeting of Richard II and Dermot McMurrough. A street scene in Cork, 1845, is used to introduce photographic representation, 'a new window is opened on to the past by which we can look at it through 20th Century eyes'. Photographs are shown of James Stephens, incidents during the Land War (1879-1882), Sackville (O'Connell) St and the G.P.O, Douglas Hyde, Eoin MacNeill, Arthur Griffith and events relating to the Boer War (1899-1902). Queen Victoria visits Ireland in 1900. W B Yeats and Lennox Robinson are shown as part of the Irish Literary Revival., while Patrick Pearse is presented as editor of the Gaelic League newspaper and founder of St Enda's School, Rathfarnham, Co Dublin. The main focus of the film follows with the accelerating struggle for an independent Irish state: Roger Casement's arrest in 1916, the 1916 Easter Rising, British soldiers entering Dublin, soldiers firing on the rebels and ruins of buildings, the surrender order, British soldiers at the steps of Liberty Hall, Countess Markievicz and Michael Mallin under arrest, a column of prisoners, Eoin MaNeill under arrest, Martial Law proclaimed, men demolishing buildings, execution of Easter Rising leaders using newspaper headlines and film of Kilmainham Jail, deportation of prisoners, Roger Casement executed, Irish recruitment to British Army and Cardinal Logue, North Roscommon election victory for Sinn Fein candidate, Count Plunkett, the continuing war in the trenches of Europe, Joseph McGuinness, Sinn Fein prisoner, runs in Longford by-election, released prisoners homecoming, crowds greet Countess Markievicz at Westland Row railway station, Dublin, Countess Markievicz speaks at Liberty Hall, Eamon de Valera wins Clare by-election, Bodenstown, where Wolfe Tone is buried, is seen, Unionists and Irish Parliamentary Party Convention at Trinity College, Dublin, Liam Cosgrave wins Kilkenny by-election with de Valera and Markievicz speaking at rally, the funeral of Thomas Ashe, the first nationalist to die after 1916, and the first to die on hunger-strike, Michael Collins delivers an oration, Sinn Fein National Convention at Mansion House, Dublin, Manchester Martyrs procession, Limerick, Austin Stack leads the Volunteers, Connaught Rangers in World War One trenches, South Armagh by-election won by Irish Parliamentary Party, Irish bishops oppose conscription, anti-conscription general strike, General French appointed Viceroy, Sinn Fein candidate and Vice-President of the Party, Fr Michael O'Flanagan, wins the East Clare by-election, early 1918 imprisonment of Sinn Fein leaders, Michael Collins speaking before 1918 general election, MISE ÉIRE end on the triumphant note of the Sinn Fein victories in the 1918 general election.

NOTE:

MISE ÉIRE was the first of a projected three-part actuality film series on 20th century Irish history. While part two, SAOIRSE?, was released in 1961, see below, part three, on post-Civil War Irish, was not made. A documentary film using manuscript, photographic and newspaper material and archive film footage to trace the struggle for Irish independence. A literate Irish language commentary from Sean MacReamoinn and an evocative musical score by Sean O Riada add emotional emphasis. The film begins by illustrating how artifacts and manuscripts can serve as historical records. Chapters from Irish history - from the iron age through the medieval period to the early nineteenth century - are briefly recounted. Photographic representation, the commentary asserts, means "now a new window is opened onto the past by which we look at it through twentieth century eyes." The film illustrates and outlines, primarily through the use of newsreel, the growth of the Home Rule and broader and more radical Irish nationalist movements. The role of developments such as the Land War and the influence of Afrikaner nationalism and the Boer War in the national revival are charted. The conflict over Home Rule (the proposal for self-government for Irish within the United Kingdom) is portrayed: the story of the rise of anti-Home Rule agitation and politics among Protestants in Ulster particularly is told. The centre-piece of the film is the Easter Rising (rebellion) of April 1916. The events leading up to the rebellion, the conflict itself, the surrender, the arrests, executions, imprisonments, internments and jubilant home comings are detailed. There is the impact of the executions - the rise of Sinn Fein, its victories in a series of by elections in 1917, starting with the Roscommon by election. The policy of abstentionism (non-attendance at Westminster) on the part of Sinn Fein MPs emerges. All of this lays the foundation for an exegesis, the Sinn Fein electoral success in the British general election of 1918. The film Mise Eire stands on its own but may also be seen as one of two films - the other being Saoirse? (Freedom?). Both these films chart, from a distinctly and unashamedly nationalist perspective, the story of the rise of Irish political nationalism and the birth of the modern Irish state. The period covered by the films is from the 1890s through to 1922. Mise Eire: Mise Eire, the first of the films, covers the period up to 1918, the (British) general election of that year and the return of Sinn Fein candidates in 73 out of a total of 105 constituencies in Ireland. The 1918 election was the last all-Irish election to the Westminster parliament. It was the prelude to the War of Independence (1919 -1921), the Anglo Irish Treaty (1921), the ensuing Sinn Fein split over the terms of the Treaty, the partition of Ireland (into Northern Ireland as a UK province and the Irish Free State, later Republic of Ireland) and in the Free State, the Civil War 1922 - 23). The period: The period between circa 1880 and 1923 was the defining period in modern Irish history. In 1879 Michael Davitt established the Land League, commencing the Land War (1879 - 1882). This was the political agitation to change the (landlord/estate) system of land ownership and tenant farming. The weapons of boycott and no rent were forged. The late 1870s were years of agricultural crisis: famine combining with falling tillage and butter prices. Evictions, clearances and rural outrages - Captain Moonlight - grew and became rampant through the Land War years. In 1880 Parnell - 'the Chief' - was in leadership of the Irish Parliamentary Party. Gladstone - the 'friend of Ireland' - again assumed the Premiership in 1880. Gladstone was the exemplar of that phenomenon, what one (British) writer on film (in a review of Mise Eire) has called the Britons' "highly advanced neurosis of guilt on all matters Irish." Through the 1880s many of the key elements of the revival movement and political nationalism were put in place or achieved renewal. The success of Davitt's Land League led through the 1880s to ongoing land reform in the shape of Government supported tenant purchase and the break up of the estates. The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) came into being in 1882. Fenianism was renewed under John O Leary and was - through O Leary's wide circle of associates and acquaintances - connected to cultural revival and nationalist politics. In Ulster Orangeism, Conservatism and unionism gelled to establish the major counter-pole to Irish nationalism on the island of Ireland. The focus of unionist development was the attempt by Gladstone to legislate for Home Rule for Irish. By the mid 1880s it was clear that Home Rule could not happen without a major change in the British political constitution - the castration of the House of Lords. Between 1890 and 1916 Irish divided between nationalism and unionism. The Irish Parliamentary Party also split - the result of the Parnell scandal. Home Rule disappeared as an immediate prospect. Nationalism's agenda became radicalised. The cultural, linguistic and political movements also became ever more closely connected. By 1914 there was a new Home Rule crisis prompted by a new Home Rule Act. Unionism and nationalism further polarised. Irish nationalists were also by now inspired by the Afrikaners and the Boer War. There was militarisation of unionism and nationalism - the Larne and Howth gun runnings, the establishment of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Irish Volunteers (precursor to the IRA) and the rise to dominance of the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). From a nationalist standpoint the film charts this story and, from the narrative's perspective, its culmination in the rising of 1916, the crushing of the rebellion, the public reaction against the measures taken by the British administration, the rise of Sinn Fein through a series of by election victories in 1917 and the vindication of the party, the organisers of the rising and militant nationalism in the landslide results of the 1918 general election. The making of the film: George Morrison began work on Mise Eire in 1952, tracking down and cataloguing film material. The making of the film was commissioned in 1958 by the Irish language and cultural organisation Gael Linn. Morrison assembled an impressive team to help realise the project. Sean MacReamoinn, Liam Budhlear and Padraig O Raghallaigh were with Radio Eireann. O Raghallaigh was also well known as a voice over artist for films. Composer Sean O Riada also had worked in Radio Eireann and was at this stage musical director at the Abbey Theatre. Academically trained his compositional life was explicitly modernist. O Riada by this stage had begun his radical reinterpretation of traditional Irish music - replacing the Ceili band with an ensemble approach modelled on the chamber group of classical music. The technique of the director might be described as 'musical'. It is to assemble, layer and 'orchestrate' archive footage; a powerful narrative line fashioned into a highly literate and evocative script; voice overs by well chosen artists; and a powerful, specially composed film score performed by the Radio Eireann Symphony Orchestra. At critical moments the story is emotionally driven by the music and also by the use of English language newspaper headlines as de facto intertitles. This adds emotional impact but also the use of the headlines helps overcome a language difficulty - by the 1960s most Irish people have but rudimentary knowledge at best of the Irish language although their familiarity, in 1959/60, with the story line and the interpretation would have been total. The release of Mise Eire: The film was first shown at the Cork Film Festival in late 1959. It was then shown in Gweedore, in the Donegal Gaeltacht. Released commercially in February 1960 the impact was enormous and the acclaim effectively total and generalised. Almost the only counterpoint to the general adulation was by Flann O Brien/Brian O Nolan/Myles na gCopaleen in his Cruiskeen Lawn column in the Irish Times (his columns of 17 and 18 February 1960). The film was first shown in Northern Ireland, in the predominantly nationalist town of Newry, on 3 March 1960. In September 1960 the Police Committee of Belfast Corporation recommended the banning of the film in Belfast. The decision was subsequently reversed.

Source: http://www.tcd.ie/irishfilm/print.php?search=keyword&q=prisoners&exactMatch=&extraSearch=