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Ryan's Daughter (1970)

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57 out of 58 people found the following comment useful :-
A victim of mistaken expectations, 24 August 2004
Author: david-greene5 from North Huntingdon, PA, U.S.A.

It is such a major tragedy that one of the greatest directors in the history of film, David Lean was so savaged by the critics after pouring vast stores of time, energy and devotion into this production. It has long been clear to me why "Ryan's Daughter" was so poorly received. After Lean's previous epics, everyone was certain that, with all the time and money that went into this film, and with its lengthy running time, it would simply have to be a similar type of show. When people bring such expectations to a movie and are confronted with something so daringly different, they often focus on what they didn't see and miss the virtue of the picture they saw. This film is too "slow", too absorbed with the subtle dynamics of the interaction between its characters for a viewer who is burning to see vast battle scenes, mighty parades and mobs of extras caught up in violent historical struggles. The "spectacle" in this film (and spectacle it is indeed) comes from the exquisite widescreen lensing of stunning Irish coastal scenery. The fabulous storm sequence with villagers battling raging surf in their efforts to retrieve floating contraband is, in my opinion, unmatched in all the thousands of movies I have seen. The drama of the central characters' lives and the depiction of the way the eternal conflicts that continue to trouble their nation work to destroy normal existence for them....this all works for me. I guess there are going to be many who just can't buy into the whole thing, but I can only feel sorry for them. To me, Lean did create an epic here, but not the traditional kind that everyone came to see. It is a "feast-for-the-eyes", intimate epic of the tumultuous emotional life of a little village caught in a swirl of hatred, suspicion, prejudice and seething conflict with an occupying army. One of my dearest hopes is that I may live to see a handsome DVD release of this splendid masterpiece before too much more time elapses. It should NEVER be viewed in some pan-and-scan edition on an ordinary TV! Seen this way with all that glorious cinematography cropped and miniaturized, "Ryan's Daughter" could indeed be seen as a failure. I always wonder how many magnificent David Lean films we will never see as a result of the unproductive years that resulted from the crushing effect on the director of the widespread rejection of this wonderful creation. What a travesty!

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30 out of 33 people found the following comment useful :-
Ryan's Daughter" - A beautiful & haunting Super Panavision 70 masterpiece, 4 May 2004
Author: markr-19 (markr@nortelnetworks.com) from Sydney

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Viewing this $12 Million David Lean directed motion picture in its original 1969/70 release in Super Panavision 70 would have been a glorious event for any true cinema lover. The fact that there is a good quality 70mm print still in existence not only shows how badly this film did in it's initial 70mm roadshow release but gives us hope that we may again get chance to see this work as it was originally intended.

Lean and Robert Bolt (married at the time to female lead, Sarah Miles) loosely based their doomed love story on Gustave Flaubert "Madame Bovary". In bringing it to the screen, Lean uses a beautifully evocative score by Maurice Jarre (superior to their earlier collaborations), then adds rare photographic grandeur with the exquisite 70mm cinematography of `the master" Freddie Young (picking up another Oscar for his remarkable work) making this movie a haunting and startlingly breathtaking experience.

It's a story that encompasses many facets, war, isolation, community, betrayal, religion, sex and infidelity however it is mostly about love, in every sense. The setting is a small isolated coastal village on the west coast of Ireland during the First World War with focus on the British military occupation of the region. Rosie Ryan (Sarah Miles in her Oscar nominated performance), daughter of local publican Tom Ryan (Leo McKern) is a young beautiful girl who sets her cap for the older local unassuming, & quite school teacher (her teacher), the widowed Charles Shaughnessy (played perfectly by Hollywood legend, Robert Mitchum) seeing him as a "worldly and fascinating" man.

Charles and Rose marry but married turns out to be disappointing for Rose, not what she expected at all. Charles turns out to be an ordinary man; dull and uninteresting (even in bed). "There must be more!" Rose tells the village priest (played with gusto & heart by Trevor Howard), "Be careful what you ask for Rose." he tells her, "Because as sure as hell you'll get it " the film then kicks into high gear with the arrival of a young handsome and troubled British officer Randolph Doryan (distantly played Christopher Jones, think Colin Farrell). The scene in Tom Ryan's pub when the young lovers first meet is one of the most tender and erotic love scenes ever filmed and starts an affair that is destined to bring heartache.

The villagers in this small Irish town are insular, bigoted and jealous and above all harboring a hatred for the British. They take pleasure exacting humiliation on the local village idiot, Michael (brilliantly played by John Mills who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar) and later taking revenge on the innocent leaving the cowardly traitor in their midst. A sad ending but with a little hope and of all the intense relationships in this story, the farewell between Rose and Michael is most heartfelt and touching.

A simple and ordinary story, criticizes for its scope and length. So why play put it on such a large canvas (70mm)? Some argue the story is too delicate and simple and should have been a "smaller" movie which is wrong, this would have deleted the impact of the story, anyone seeing this movie in 70mm will most definitely agree, the large scope and length of this work only enhances it's intimacy and reality, seen as it was intended, "Ryan's Daughter" will transfix from start to finish, you can notice this dilution if you see the film in 35mm. One of the last movies shot in the 70mm process it is truly one of the best, taking full advantage of the rugged West Irish (and South African) coastlines, the Super Panavision camera pick up everything down to the grains in the sand on those wonderful beaches and all the emotions and feeling, to assist it is acted superbly by a stellar cast who bring you right into the lives and fate of their isolated and "ordinary" Irish characters.

"Ryan's Daughter" is so misunderstood and ignore as a masterpiece perhaps somewhat long especially for today's audiences, it is never dull how it remains underrated and ignored is a mystery, yet to a lot of discerning movie goers it is superior piece of cinema and surly no one can deny the beauty of this work. The storm sequence alone (without today's CGI enhancements) is awesome, perhaps the best storm scene ever put on celluloid, and how no one died during filming is a miracle.

Savagely panned by the critics, especially the venomous Pauline Kael on it's initial release, so badly it sent David Lean into a self imposed exile (he didn't make another film for fourteen years, the less extravagant, minimally mounted "A Passage to India", which of the two films touches you the most??), perhaps Ms Kael, the critics and the public at large in 1960/70 lacked the sensitivity needed to make this movie a hit, tending to flock to films like "Mash", "The Godfather" and "Easy Rider", unfortunately they missed a fine and beautiful work of art. Believe me as I stated earlier, if you get change to see this work on the big screen now (a rare event), even with a 35mm print, Lean's fine hand and sensitivity is evident in every frame of "Ryan's Daughter", more so than in his other works or those of his contemporaries, faithfully accurate to the period (and lacking the 1960's inspired hair do's and fashion of "Doctor Zhivago") it remains as fresh today as it did in 1970.

It is disappointing to know that it is again being ignored, with no DVD release in sight (are you listening Warner Bros?), how many other Lean movies are waiting for transfer to DVD??? Surely the cinematography and acting alone makes it a worthy candidate for a high quality transfer. If they do plan a DVD release let's hope Warner's uses the Super Panavision 70mm components and the full Roadshow length to create a DVD masterpiece from this ignored cinema masterwork, there should be some great extras out their given the epic nature of the movie, it's director and stars.

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29 out of 34 people found the following comment useful :-
Sadly forgotten beautiful epic., 22 March 2001
Author: adam (picicici@freemail.hu) from Budapest, Hungary

It's one of the most underrated, but one of the most beautiful epic that ever put on screen. It's directed by David Lean, who made 'The Bridge on the River Kwai', 'Lawrence of Arabia' and 'Doctor Zhivago' before and this film ranks up with his previous works. I can only write about this film in superlatives. Foremost the photography - another excellent work by Freddie Young - honoured with an Academy Award, and the acting by John Mills, who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his outstanding performance as the dumb fisherman. But I would have awarded Sarah Miles (she's "just" nominated for the Best Actress Oscar). Robert Mitchum has never been better, he fills the widow village teacher's character with life. Also great performances by the supporting cast - the aged Trevor Howard as the priest, and Ryan, the two-faced village pub owner, who risks his daughter's life when the villagers abusing her. It's one of the most disgusting character I've ever seen. Robert Bolt's original screenplay is also one of the most complex story I've ever seen. It' as good as the screenplay of 'Doctor Zhivago' which was honoured with an Academy Award and also written by Robert Bolt. This is a film about an outstanding love at an unbearable period of history between an English officer and an Irish woman. It's about sensitivity, courage, hope, admiring and collaborating. The story is so complex, that it's almost impossible to summarize in few words, so I would like to draw the attention to some WONDERFUL scenes: the love scene between the two young lovers, full of symbols and sensitively photographed. It's the most poetic love scene ever. The other beautiful scene is when Robert Mitchum finds his wife's and her lover's footsteps in the beach sand, follows them, imagines what could have happened between the two lovers and becomes sure, that his wife has got another man in her life. And finally of course the storm scene, when the villagers try to save the weapons from the stormy sea. This enormously powerful scene with those poetic scenes above are my favourites in the movie, but the whole movie is full of wonderful scenes and the 3 hours long film remains a religious experience until the last minute.

Last but not least I have to mention the score which can be explained perfectly in 4 words: made by Maurice Jarre. Could be jungle, desert, Russian winter or wild Irish landscapes David Lean always knew how to use these locations to tell his stories. It's pity, that he didn't make any movies until 1984, because of the bad critics. Waste of talent and genius.

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20 out of 22 people found the following comment useful :-
An outstanding piece of cinema, 13 April 2000

Author: raymond-15 from Australia

David Lean's production of "Ryan's Daughter"is an outstanding piece of cinematic artistry. It's a romantic drama set in a small village on the Irish coastline. The mood of the villagers is as changeable as the waves that crash upon the shore. David Lean uses the sea for dramatic effect as he alternates between the village people and the sea itself. John Mills as Michael the inquisitive village idiot is superb as we watch him play with a box of explosives. Sarah Miles plays Rosy torn between the love for her Irish schoolteacher husband (Robert Mitchum) and an unbridled passion for a newly arrived British officer (Christopher Jones). Village gossip virtually destroys Rosy's life. Trevor Howard as the local much-respected priest gives a compelling performance as one who tries to keep the peace in a troubled village. The shell-shocked officer with dreadful memories of his time in the trenches in France has a distinct presence on screen. His part requires little dialogue, the emotions being portrayed through eye and body language. Some of the loveliest scenes I thought were those of the high cliffs and broad beaches where Rosy often walked alone with the incoming tide.Unfortunately footprints in the sand can reveal the most intimate secrets! The wild storm in which the locals attempt to salvage boxes of ammunition from a shipwreck in raging seas is one of the most realistic and exciting sequences I have seen. We are reminded constantly in the film that the sea is the dominant player. Photography, sound effects and music blend into a perfect whole. In one word...a winner!

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22 out of 29 people found the following comment useful :-
Nothing short of a masterpiece., 2 September 2003
Author: Spleen from Canberra, Australia

So who's right? Is it a dull, lumbering vehicle with beautiful photography and little else, or is it nothing short of a masterpiece?

Nothing short of a masterpiece.

So what explains the critical shellacking it got back in the 1970s, and the lazy kicks in the ribs it continues to get today? I have only a weak suggestion, scarcely an explanation at all:

It was the zeitgeist. The early 1970s - although the trend really began in the late 1960s - saw the rise of a dreary, kitchen-sink style of film-making which is easiest to recognise by its dingy cinematography (although that's not all here is to it); it was the style in which the young lions of 1970s American cinema (Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and if "THX-1138" is the kind of film people say it is, George Lucas) made their name. It's true that time has not been kind to this style, and that the greatest films of the 1970s (like this one) owe nothing to it, but to be fair, it IS possible to make good films in this style, and a few such were made. The greatest asset of standard 1970s film-making is, as it happens, one also possessed by Lean: the ability to be in deadly earnest, to banish any hint of irony or sarcasm when it's not wanted. But this doesn't change the fact that "Ryan's Daughter" is not only different from what was modish around the time it was made; it ADVERTISES this difference. It might very well have the most beautiful cinematography of any film shot anywhere at any time. What's more, gorgeous photography is part of the essence of the film, not something that one can grime down in one's imagination to reveal a distinctively '70s film, in which the composition of shots doesn't matter, there's no atmosphere to speak of and everybody mumbles half-formed thoughts in ungrammatical sentences. This film, simply and unmistakably, doesn't belong in the era in which it was made.

At any rate the stated reasons for condemning he film don't sound at all convincing. Pauline Kael made a big deal of the fact that she couldn't accept Robert Mitchum as a mild-tempered cuckolded husband, which leads me to conclude that (a) she'd just seen "Cape Fear" the previous night, and (b) her brain was tired that week. In a way I can appreciate her difficulty, since when I saw the film, I wasn't aware that it WAS Robert Mitchum until I saw the end credits, so entirely convincing is he (and everyone else, for that matter). Another thing I've seen written a couple of times is that the film is "over-produced", a charge it's hard to make sense of. So Lean made a better film than, strictly speaking, he had to, in order to be faithful to the script? And this is meant to be a CRITICISM?

The only complaint that has justice on its side is the one directed at Maurice Jarre's score, too relentlessly jaunty at ill-chosen moments, particularly in the early arts of the film, without enough meat on the bones of the tunes to justify the fact that the music is really doing little to help. But even here, criticism is exaggerated. A majority of films released since, say, 1990, and this includes a majority of GOOD films, have musical scores that contribute even less, and are even more ill-judged; with "Ryan's Daughter" far more than with those films, complaining about the music seems petty.

Nothing so beautiful as "Ryan's Daughter" could possibly be other than good; the story is a fine one, simple in shape yet morally complex, and it's honestly told, with each point of view made vivid. The three hours are there to be relished. Lean uses the length of his film to make you wish it were longer still.

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14 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Human longing for life, bare and simple on the screen, 16 December 1999
Author: lfsutherland from Melbourne, Australia

I love this movie. Saw it again last night on the big, wide screen at the Astor, from a beautiful new print. There is much to deserve love: the artistry of the film making; unspeakably fine cinematography; superb use of music and sound (hearing nothing but the wind in the trees during the forest scene is breathlessly sensual); and major and minor characters who each in their own way reflect the eternal enigma of human longing for life and transcendence. The film's evocation of human lives caught up in the inexorable forces of nature and history at this particular moment and place is profoundly arresting. There's a timelessness about this movie which makes the criticisms I've heard - about miscasting, stiff acting and the like - melt away into irrelevance, or even shows them to be virtues. I love the way the film maintains narrative integrity but has a foreordained, mythical quality as well: the overwhelming, all-penetrating power of nature and fate seems to make the human doings at once piercingly real and immediate, yet disconnected, almost surreal. But the touches of humour and sharp, immediate visual detail (often wittily drawn from the visual history of paintings and caricatures of village life) save us from any kind of authorial portent or angst: the greatest wonder of this artful work is that there is nothing between us and the story, except perhaps the icy whip of the ocean wind gainst our faces. The range of characters both in kind and in how we experience them is enlivening - from the formidably down to earth Father Collins, to the captivatingly tragic and symbolic figure of Doryan. And Michael the retarded angel is the ultimate figure of grace.

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16 out of 21 people found the following comment useful :-
They don't make them like this any more., 30 September 2004
Author: jackie-107 from Lochawe, Scotland

The art of David Lean in making film masterpieces from the 1940s to this last epic in 1970 is now a forgotten talent. Lean was the best at producing cinema that really was for the cinema. You can feel the cameras rolling, the scenes moving at a pace moviegoers can absorb and thrill to. Ryan's Daughter belongs with the best of Lean, and has long been underrated. The acting is wonderful - John Mills is outstanding, Leo McKern and Trevor Howard impeccable, Sarah Miles and Robert Mitchum excellent with just the right amount of awkwardness the parts require. Christopher Jones gave just the right amount of weight to the shell-shocked, traumatised World War I survivor of the trenches. The scenery lent itself to panoramic filming and the storm was a fantastic achievement on film for the period.

Unfortunately, Lean's epics don't come over half so well on the small screen. I wish we could see all these films again in the cinema. I saw the revival of Gone With The Wind in 1968 in a big London cinema and it was marvelous. Wouldn't it be wonderful to see Lawrence of Arabia, Dr Zhivago, and Ryan's Daughter again on the big screen?

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11 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
I Know What I Like, 24 March 2004
Author: heidi-moore from Hamilton Ontario Canada

Despite all the nay-saying, this is one of my favourite films. Every now and again, everything clicks for you in terms of how a film is put together. I never tire of watching this movie. And despite what anyone else thinks about the music, I thought it was some of Maurice Jarre's finest work. Apparently it was some of his own favorite composition work. I hope someday to get over to the West coast of Ireland and see some of the scenery in person. I thought that the acting in the film was some of the most courageous work that some of the actors had ever taken on. The film was just long enough for me. As for the esteemed David Lean, no one---and I mean no one--was ever as good at making mankind seem so small and insignificant when compared to the forces and spaces in nature. He was able to take Freddy Young's cinematography and bring out the best in it. I liked it when I was younger, and I like it even more now. I respect it very much and pity those who are unable to savour it. I admit that very few people will be able digest it in it's entirety. Thank god I'm not one of them. Thank-you Mr. Lean wherever you are.

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12 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Long, sweeping and underrated - but easy to see why many don't like it., 5 January 2004

Author: Peter Hayes from United Kingdom

In 1918 Ireland a school teacher's wife and an army captain have an illicit affair that has far reaching consequences.

The film that cast Robert Mitchum so against type as to be untrue (a cuckold husband!) and whose critical response drove a great director to near two decades of silence has to be viewed; if only as cinema history.

This is a small film blown up to try and be an epic, which it is not and that is the first of its faults. Nevertheless I think it is an important and enjoyable product that I have seen twice, once for the film and once to re-live the unbelievable cinematography and action scenes. The lifeboat scene is one of the greatest pieces of cinema ever, it should feature in film schools.

The problem with adultery is that directors always try and limit blame because they fear alienating the audience. Here we have no reason for it other than lust and selfishness, one person's happiness (if only brief) is only achieved by taking someone else's.

I have long held the view that Mitchum was underrated as an actor and has a wonderful speaking voice. I am glad he has this on his C.V, not that he will be need it anymore. Miles is equally good, although it is not as hard as hard a part to play. John Mills - as the village idiot - won an Oscar for his over-the-top performance that he reports upon faithfully on his autobiography. "They sat me down and gave me the worst haircut they could think of..."

It has been said so many before, but there is no real need for a film with modest intentions to be so long. I actually don't mind because I have a lot of patience with quality material and know there will be some great scenes in any David Lean film. I am just sorry that the main man had such a fragile ego; especially when the industry had rewarded him with so much silverware.

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14 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
a captivating film, 31 October 2001
Author: Prosinecki from Zagreb, Croatia

The wonderfull scenery of Ireland comes alive in this often forgotten film by Lean. It is a story of denied passion and forgiving love.

I was mostly impressed by the performance of Christopher Jones as major Doryan, the officer who has a brief romance with Rose, he is obviously tormented by his experiences in the trenches and finds a bit of relief and shelter in the arms of the innocent Irish lady.

I highly recommend this movie to all who enjoy beautifull landscapes and drama.

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