The Quiet Man is a knockabout romantic comedy in which director John Ford pays tribute to his Irish ancestry. Based on the short story Green Rushes which appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1933, the film can be seen as an Irish version of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, in which Sean Thornton (played splendidly with a comic touch by a much underrated John Wayne) returns to his native Ireland and falls in love with a beautiful but tempestuous red-headed local girl Mary Kate Danaher (O'Hara).

It also represents an Irish-American culture clash where the easy-going rural Irish villagers emerge as the more materialistic society obsessed with land and hard cash. For Sean Thornton, who has abandoned his adopted America following a boxing match in which he killed his opponent, an obsession with money or prize-money leads to dire consequences.

John Ford's expert sense of character and landscape won him his fourth Academy Award for directing this film, following The Informer in 1935, The Grapes of Wrath in 1940 and How Green Was My Valley in 1941, a feat never matched by any other director.

The principal action of the film is triggered when Sean buys his ancestral home and ignites a feud with local landowner Will Danaher (McLaglen) who had seen it as a stepping stone in his courtship of a wealthy widow living nearby: "I'm Sean Thornton and I was born in that little cottage over there. And I've come home, and home I'm gonna stay".

But for Sean this more than just a cottage on a piece of land. It's a form of heaven compared with the hell he endured in the steel mills of Pittsburgh, where he lived as a child in a shack near the slag heaps. The cottage is Paradise Lost and he wants to regain it.

The stage is now set for a clash between these two men, and the catalyst proves to be the most reliable incendiary in any story " a beautiful woman. Mary Kate is Will Danaher's young sister. But she also represents a romanticised version of Ireland complete with red hair, blue blouse and bare feet, tending her sheep in a breathtaking pastoral image crafted by the director. She might be described as a mirage, but the fiery passionate nature of Mary Kate is real enough, when Sean first sees her, Mary Kate returns the look with a lengthy gaze before bounding off with her flock.

Ford's use of landscape is deeply symbolic. Rivers and bridges abound in this film, as Ford suggests that whatever cultural gap exists between the locals and 'the returned Yank', it can be overcome.

Through the connivance of the local matchmaker and the parish priest (played impeccably by Barry Fitzgerald and Ward Bond), Sean succeeds in courting and then marrying Mary Kate. But Will Danaher has been tricked into giving his consent to the wedding and refuses to pay the customary dowry. The dowry is not important to Sean but it holds huge social significance to Mary Kate as it marks her transition to womanhood and freedom.

Sean refuses to fight his new brother-in-law for something as sordid as a dowry and Mary Kate interprets this as a lack of love (and respect) for her. Finally standing face-to-face with Danaher, Sean demands his dowry for his wife. Danaher refuses and Sean throws a humiliated Mary Kate back at her brother's feet. No money, no marriage. "We call it quits!! Mary Kate is stunned but Danaher's standing in the community looks set to plummet.

Danaher throws the money at Sean and in an instance Mary Kate's honour has been restored. To prove how little the banknotes mean to her, Mary Kate holds open the furnace door of a thrashing machine. Sean realises what she means and throws the �350 into the flames. This ritual burning purges Sean of his past and it's time for the final showdown.

The inevitable brawl between Sean Thornton and Will Danaher is one of the great fight sequences in cinema history, helped by the fact McLaglen was a noted pugilist before he became an actor. Not only does it have pace, originality and humour, it has many of the ingredients of classic literature.

From the slag heaps of Pittsburgh to a bare knuckle fight in an Irish field, Sean's journey has been heroic, even Homeric, as the matchmaker comments when he sees the wreckage of Sean's wedding bed.

Like the ancient story of Gilgamesh, Sean confronts an equally formidable opponent and, as they join battle, the two men develop respect for each other and become friends. And in the tradition of all cathartic drama, they eventually sit down and break bread together, in this case a supper prepared by the newly liberated Mary Kate in Sean's cottage.

A worthy, neglected film, deserving a long-overdue re-evaluation.