Yeats Country
Yeats Country is a lyrical film commissioned by the Department of Foreign Affairs to commemorate the centenary of the birth of William Butler Yeats. The first Irish film by cinematographer and director Patrick Carey celebrates the landscape of Yeats’ poetry through stunning photography, narrated by Tom St. John Barry. Evocative images of the west of Ireland illustrate the poet’s life including Thoor Ballylee Castle where he lived, Coole Park, home of Lady Gregory where literary figures of the period socialised, Lissadell House, Knocknarea Mountain, the slopes of Ben Bulben, the waterfall at Glencar and finally Yeats’ grave at Drumcliffe. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short in 1966.
Documentary
6.7
3 reviewsRuntime: 17 min.
Budget: N/A
Revenue: N/A
Release Date: 1965-06-01
Director(s): Patrick Carey
Production: Aengus Films
Languages: English
IMDB: tt0059926
Recommendations
Reviews
CinemaSerf★ 6/102/1/2026
Us Celts do love to run a bit to language, especially if we can set it to our picturesque scenery. We had Robert Burns in Scotland and the Irish had, somewhat later, WB Yeats to turns his thoughts to the beauty and poeticism of many things from the Emerald Isle. This short feature serves to showcase some of the verdant countryside with it’s pristine streams and waterfalls and it’s lonely looking mountains that have been sourcing myths and legend since times immemorial. With some wildlife making an appearance, too, the narrator delivers us a potted history of the man himself, and of his many familiar associates, as well as waxing lyrical as we traverse the land enjoying the beauty and the occasional bleakness of the west of the island, and County Sligo where this particular bard spent many of his formative years. This makes no attempt at offering us a chronology of his life, nor any sort of detailed biopic, it satisfies itself with being a misty-eyed tourist attraction accompanied by some of his verses and it's quite watchable at that.