Ryan's Daughter

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!

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?

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.

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.

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.