My Life for Ireland (1941): Cast & Plot

Two generations of an Irish nationalist family form the through-line of this story, anchored by the epochal pull of Dublin’s early 20th century and the shadow it casts on the lives that follow. The elder Michael O’Brien, Werner Hinz, becomes a focal point when a brutal 1903 raid on a thatched home erupts into a fierce confrontation with Irish nationalists, driving the family into peril. In the ensuing gunfight, the young family is thrust into crisis: Michael is captured and condemned to death, his fate sealed by a war that is barely beginning to burn in the national imagination. During his imprisonment, his fiancée Maeve, a pregnant and resolute woman, visits him and the couple seal their bond in secret marriage.