I will be at rehearsal tonight, so I won’t get to watch it on St. Patrick’s Day, but I am setting the DVR to record “The Quiet Man,” a movie which I really ought to purchase on DVD, and soon.

If you’ve seen it, you know it’s the perfect taste of Ireland (no doubt more Irish than the actual Ireland, but who cares?). It was a labor of love for director John Ford, who tried for years to interest a variety of Hollywood studios. Finally, cheapo lot Republic Pictures agreed to make the movie — but only if Ford and his stars John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara would also make a Western for Republic (which was considered a much safer bet). That movie, by the way, was “Rio Grande.”

I’ve blogged this before, but there’s one line in the movie which makes me belly-laugh every time I hear it. Wayne’s and O’Hara’s characters have gotten married, but they’ve had a fight, breaking their bed in the process, and therefore never consummated the marriage. The next day, several of the townspeople pay a courtesy call, including Michaleen Flynn (Barry Fitzgerald), with an accent thicker than a leprechaun’s.

Fitzgerald, at one point, is alone inside the house and looks at the broken bed, making his own private assumptions about how it was was broken.

“Impetuous! Homeric!” he exclaims, and I fall out of the chair.

If you’ve never seen this movie, you need to watch it, tonight, on TCM. The climactic fight scene is a gem.