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’)
