Examining images of gender and violence through the lens of representation studies, this book analyses selected works of three influential artists of the Irish cinema whose careers, taken together, span the period from 1939 to the present. These three filmmakers–Ford, Sheridan and Greengrass–explore fundamental questions about identity, patriarchy and violence within Irish and Irish-American contexts, and in the process upset conventional notions of masculine authority. Furthermore, Ford’s later films interestingly depart from the egalitarian ideals that distinguish his pre-World War II films.