The film is a fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­ment of the former fishermen’s and farm­ers’ life on the isle of Aran, near the west coast of Ire­land. »MAN OF ARAN was the first film Robert Fla­her­ty made after sound came in. The people speak, you hear their voices; but it does not matter whether or not you under­stand what they say, for, as in his ear­li­er films, it is not what you hear but what you see; it is still the camera, it is still life expressed through motion…Robert Fla­her­ty loved people who could be so much them­selves, with such spirit. For this was cinema. And his love made them a little more them­selves, a little bigger than life­size. Those three men in that cur­ragh riding the storm became char­ac­ters out of one of their own heroic leg­ends, a saga o them­selves. And that is poetry.« (Frances Fla­her­ty, ‘Intro­duc­ing Man of Aran’)