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Yes, it is safe to say that de Valera was *completely* misreprestented in this film. Note this quotation from Alan Rickman on the BBC in 2001: 'Neil Jordan said to me, when I started doing the research on De Valera for Michael Collins, "So do you hate him yet?" before we'd started...'. To many Irish people, Rickman seemed the wrong person to play the role. Would you have guessed, for example, that in 1916, de Valera was 33 years old, married with four children and a mathematics lecturer? The youngest of his seven children was born just weeks before the Civil War (1922) started. As the magazine 'Newsweek' noted: "Alan Rickman’s bizarre, mannered De Valera seems to have been invented by Lewis Carroll: it’s hard to accept this giant twitchy rabbit as the elder statesman of the Irish Republic". (If you want to compare Rickman's accent to what de Valera really sounded like in 1920, here's a <a href="http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r? ammem/nfor:@field(SOURCE+@band (DeValera,+Eamonn,+1882+1975)):heading=Speeches+by+Eamonn+De Valera">link</a>.<br> Certain misleading impressions of de Valera are given in the film. One of these is that de Valera was actuated by jealousy of Collins's fame. This is not correct. He is also portayed as advocating foolish military actions. This is also incorrect. De Valera is shown as making an inflammatory speech to the effect that civil war should be pursued, and that certain people should be killed as a means to an end. "If it is only by civil war that we can gain our independence, than so be it." This is doubly wrong, as no-one realised better than de Valera the insanity of such a view. The director and screenwriter Jordan defended himself by saying that de Valera had actually said this. Wrong. What Jordan did was to take a speech by de Valera, which was admittedly controversial, in which he predicted that bloodshed would occur should civil war take place, and put in things that de Valera didn't say. As a historian, I think this a disgraceful practice.<br> In the treaty debates in the Irish parliament, de Valera is shown as abandoning the parliament with his followers. This too is misleading. The republicans left the meeting as a protest - and came back after lunch. Possibly the worst allegation made against de Valera is that he was complicit in the death of Collins, which the film portrays as premeditated murder. It is in vain for Jordan to protest that he did not intend to make such an allegation - it is clearly made. De Valera knows that some young spiv is going to kill Collins, and does nothing about it. The agenda is there, and quite clear. It has had its effect on the academic world. In a recent biography of Churchill by Roy Jenkins, de Valera is described as a terrorist, and not a statesman but a slippery politician who set up Collins and Griffith for his own political gain. That makes no sense, but the British agenda regarding Ireland has never made sense. Who needs sense when you have massive force? The really reprehensible thing about this film is that it represents de Valera, a man of idealism and integrity, just as the British tried to portray him.
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