Trivia for
Ryan's Daughter (1970)

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• The village of "Kirrary" was built just for the film and dismantled afterwards -- shops, schoolhouse, church, pub, post office, etc. 200 workmen built it all using slate and 20,000 tons of granite from a dozen local quarries; anything less substantial wouldn't have stood up to the Atlantic gales. Many buildings had fitted interiors, ceilings, lighting, plumbing and even working fireplaces and chimneys.
  
  
• In 1971, 'John Mills' won best supporting actor for playing a mute in this film. He bowed and said nothing in the shortest acceptance speech on record.
  
  
• During the filming of the movie on the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland's County Kerry, Mitchum planted marijuana trees in the back garden of the hotel used by the production cast and crew, and gave many of the people connected with the production - including Sarah Miles' mother, and the local constabulary - their first experiences with the drug.
  
  

• Christopher Jones was dubbed by Julian Hollaway.
  
  
• Lean had difficulty casting the role of the British military officer who has an affair with the eponymous heroine. Lean wanted to work with Marlon Brando, but he was not offered the role. Lean cast Christopher Jones after seeing him in The Looking Glass War (1969), not knowing that Jones's voice had been dubbed. Jones proved a disaster during filming, which explains the monosyllabism of his character and the loquaciousness of his aide-de-camp, who had to pick up the slack, as Jones simply could not act. Jones's voice eventually was dubbed.
  
  
• Paul Scofield was offered the role of Charles Shaughnessy but turned it down. Producer Anthony Havelock-Allan then suggested Gregory Peck, who was of Irish descent and reportedly enthusiastic for the role, but David Lean turned him down as being too typecast.
  
  
• The schoolhouse built on the cliffs an Dunquin head still stands.
  
  
• Because of his negative experience working on this film Leo McKern gave up acting for some years.
  
  
• Ryan's Daughter is based on Flaubert's 'Madame Bovary'. Although set in peasant-class Ireland as opposed to middle-class France, in addition to the basic plot of a bored young wife taking a lover, other characters such as the girl's father and the priest are derived from the original. Plus the "ride in the woods" sequence.
  
  
• Peter O'Toole was considered for Michael and Doryan but turned down both parts.
  
  
• David Lean was so emotionally devastated by critic Pauline Kael's scathing reviews of this movie, he retreated for a 14-year directorial hiatus until he made A Passage to India (1984).
  
  
• 'John Mills' was the first actor cast in the film; he happened to be vacationing in Rome when Lean and Bolt began developing the project. Lean (who lived in Venice at the time) met Mills in Rome and offered him the role of the village idiot; Mills accepted, though he remarked that he felt the role was "typecasting".
  
  
• Robert Bolt wrote the part of Father Collins with Alec Guinness in mind. Guinness, a staunch Catholic, sent David Lean a long list of objections he had to the character's portrayal. Lean reportedly said "Thank you for being so frank" and then offered the part to Trevor Howard, who accepted.
  
  

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