What: The nine-minute fistfight between John Wayne and Victor McLagen in the 1952 film The Quiet Man:
Why: The Quiet Man tells the story of Wayne’s Sean Thornton, an American ex-boxer who has sworn never to fight any man again. He goes to the most gorgeous country imaginable, a Technicolor Ireland, and takes a firebrand of a fiancee, Maureen O’Hara’s ultra-red-headed Mary Kate Danaher. But Mary Kate’s surly brother, Squire Will Danaher, refuses to release her dowry, which Sean doesn’t care about. Mary Kate cares a lot, however, and so to defend his lass’s honor, Sean reluctantly takes the Squire on. And so the most sprawling brawl in cinematic history takes off, according to the quickly discarded “Marquess of Queensbury Rules.” The entire village follows the fight across town, and you sit on the edge of your seat waiting to see whose teeth get punched in next.
Impact: The Quiet Man is John Ford’s masterpiece, and that’s saying something. And what an investment: Ford bought the rights to the story for 10 bucks, and it earned him the last of his four Best Director Oscars. Wayne called this his favorite film, and again, he had lots of choices. The two made 24 films together, including The Searchers, Stagecoach, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. But none of them had a set piece like this fight, which became the standard against which all other donnybrooks are measured.
Personal Connection: When Matt Gaffney asked me to write puzzles for a book of movie crosswords, I eagerly wrote one about The Quiet Man. The long entries were all given time signatures in this fight, and their answers were locations like INTO A HAYSTACK and TO THE PUB FOR A PINT. I don’t think a crossword had ever simply been a blow-by-blow description of a single scene. Of course, I had to watch the scene ten times to get it right. Not that I’m complaining.
Other Contenders: Roddy Piper tries to get Keith David to put on the damn glasses in They Live; The Bride takes on The Crazy 88’s and Gogo’s meteor hammer in the House of the Blue Leaves in Kill Bill, Vol. 1; Chow Yun-Fat and Zhang Ziyi fight among the bamboo in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; the Wall-Crawler battles Doc Ock on a moving train in Spider-Man 2; Westley learns that Inigo Montoya is not left-handed in The Princess Bride.