A Terrible Beauty is a joint British-American motion picture, directed by Tay Garnett and released in 1960. It stars Robert Mitchum as Dermot O’Neill, Anne Heywood as Neeve Donnelly, Richard Harris as Sean Reilly and Dan O’Herlihy as Don McGinnis. The storyline of A Terrible Beauty is drawn from Arthur Roth’s 1958 novel of the same name. Roth was born in New York but raised in Northern Ireland, where he volunteered with the Irish Republic Army. Roth later served in the Irish military before emigrating back to the United States and becoming a writer. The title A Terrible Beauty is drawn from the last line of William Butler Yeats’ poem Easter, 1916. In the United States and elsewhere A Terrible Beauty was released as The Night Fighters.
The film is set in Northern Ireland in the first years of World War II. With the British at risk of defeat, ageing members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) align with the Nazis and revive the struggle for a reunited and independent Ireland. Catholic man Dermot O’Neill volunteers with a local branch of the IRA, triggering a separation from his girlfriend and mixed reactions from his family. O’Neill participates in IRA operations, raiding a British arms store and attacking a power plant. When an IRA leader plans an attack that endangers civilians, O’Neill objects and quits the group. After receiving a beating, he informs police about the planned attack. The IRA responds by declaring him an informant and ordering his abduction and probable execution. O’Neill’s friends rally to rescue him and help him escape Northern Ireland and the IRA.
A Terrible Beauty is a mundane post-war adventure film, rather than a study of the IRA or Northern Ireland. There are a few mentions of Irish history and Republican ideas but they are brief and simplistic. The connection between the IRA and Nazi Germany is mentioned a few times but never explained or explored. The wartime IRA is depicted as localised, disorganised, prone to gangsterism and led by men of poor judgement. The screenplay is poorly written; its ending abrupt and unsatisfying; and its characters are thinly drawn and one-dimensional. Though not unwatchable, A Terrible Beauty offers very little as a historical depiction of wartime Northern Ireland.
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This page was written by Jennifer Llewellyn and Steve Thompson. To reference this page, use the following citation:
J. Llewellyn and S. Thompson, “A Terrible Beauty (1960)”, Alpha History, accessed [today’s date], https://alphahistory.com/northernireland/a-terrible-beauty-1960/.