There is an almost Chaplinesque moment right at the start of "Ryan's Daughter" where O'Shaughnessy the schoolteacher is walking along the beach with his erstwhile pupil Rosie Ryan.He almost loses his footing and his hat and cane take on a life of their own as he tries to regain his balance.For a few brief seconds awe at the scenery,composition,camera - angle and sound recording is suborned by affection and sympathy for the characters before the roller coaster of technical brilliance and visual sumptuousness returns to flatten all before it. This is a film made by a master craftsman,make no mistake,but there is no warmth in it.The eponymous Miss Ryan is little more than an infatuated schoolgirl,O'Shaughnessy a shy lonely widower who feels sorry for her and surely a little guilty at taking advantage of her crush on him. Marriage to him soon brings disillusionment and Rosie starts an affair with a shell-shocked and wounded British officer fresh from the trenches who has recently arrived to take charge of the troops garrisoned near the village - a hotbed of Republicanism.Her father.the local innkeeper,has a history of involvement with The Cause,a photograph of him with a Commandant in Dublin is prominently displayed in the bar. So what we have basically is a "star-crossed lovers" movie with pretensions.There is a "chorus" of village teenagers who seem incapable of independent movement,they flock around the streets like masses of migratory birds,turning first one way then the other as if in response to some unheard command.The crusty old priest (Trevor Howard) and the village idiot(John Mills looking scarily like Wallace of Wallace & Grommit)are the conscience and the scapegoat respectively. When the rebels(or patriots depending on your point of view) come to the village to pick up guns and explosives being supplied by a German ship Rosie's father is called on to help but for some reason that's not very clear betrays them to the British.He allows Rosie to take the blame and she is badly beaten and she and O'Shaughnessy - possibly reconciled - sent into exile. Without the visual and aural bombast a competent enough 90 minutes' worth of story-telling then,but it doesn't have one believable character. Miss Sarah Miles ,presented with a role not dissimilar to her one in "Term of Trial",never convinces that she is anything other than a nice middle-class English girl cast ashore from a shipwreck in the bay and assuming an Irish accent to avoid discovery until she can be rescued. Mr Mitchum is like John Wayne in that other Oirish whims yfest "The Quiet Man" badly miscast but at least has a go at the brogue. Messrs Howard and Mills as befits senior English thesps walk through their parts with magnificent unconcern and at least Mr Mills didn't have any lines to learn,his performance consisting of a splendid array of involuntary bodily movements and grimaces,brilliantly brought off. Christopher Jones plays the British Officer with not only a stiff upper lip but also a stiff upper body and a stiff leg. The film is 36 years old and revisiting the arguments about the lack of Irish actors,the use of unhelpful stereotypes,the "Pint into a Quart pot" theory whilst tempting is ultimately pointless."Ryan's Daughter" is all style and no substance,the work of a virtuoso unable to stop himself from performing his party tricks again and again.
Review of Ryan's Daughter
