Ryan's Daughter (1970)

Between 1958 and 1970 David Lean directed four miraculous epic movies. "Bridge on the River Kwai" came out in an era of epic productions and may have been the first with a wry sense of humor. The second, "Lawrence of Arabia", is probably the best, having the most telescopic focus. Though "Lawrence" begins in the 1930s, it goes immediately to the 1916-17 Arab Revolt against the 500-year-old Muslim Ottoman Empire and stays there. It's helped along by a great cast, including Peter O'Toole's ethereal, star-making turn as Lawrence. "Doctor Zhivago" improves on its source novel by cutting out subplots. And while the novel ZHIVAGO is phenomenal, its characters feel aloof most of the time, as if Pasternak is writing a history of them rather than a story where they live and breathe. The greater part of "Zhivago" takes place around the same time as the Arab Revolt, in the Russian Revolution.Then we come to "Ryan's Daughter." No one does epic like David Lean. He has an eye for it. Not only do his characters come to life, so do his backdrops. The desert was a character in its own right in "Lawrence." His characters come to life wonderfully, something lost in many epic productions, possibly because Lean's reputation let him hire the best actors."Daughter" is a miraculous movie in many ways, but it's full of problems, the cast foremost. While as full of fine actors as most Lean productions it has some curious missteps. First is Ryan's daughter herself, played by Sarah Miles. Lean just did two movies with title characters, and one expects Ryan's daughter to dominate as much as Peter O'Toole's Lawrence or Omar Sharif's Zhivago.Unfortunately, while Sarah Miles might well be the prettiest girl in an obscure Irish village, she lacks sex appeal. Julie Christie was not the prettiest actress in the world (in some scenes in "Zhivago" she looked like a female Peter O'Toole) but the way she was photographed and lighted, along with her natural attributes, Christie oozed sex in her sexy scenes. Sarah Miles simply doesn't. Miles originally distanced herself from the part as her husband wrote it and Lean tested other actresses. But Miles was Lean's first choice so other tests were probably perfunctory. Miles can act, but she does not project the necessary sex appeal.Miles' co-sex-star Christopher Jones can't act. He was picked up from another movie before Lean learned his entire role was looped by another actor. Jones photographs well, but since he can't do the simplest acting jobs his part is like a lot of still pictures.Then there's Robert Mitchum, the third side to the triangle with Ryan's daughter. If you're a Mitchum fan you wonder why a dynamic actor is cast so against type as a dull, middle-aged Irish schoolteacher. He actually does a fine job (in a role actively sought by the more likely Gregory Peck) but he overpowers Christopher Jones (who was dubbed, as he was in the movie where Lean first saw him).Lean makes a few missteps himself. For "Kwai" and "Lawrence" and "Zhivago" he uses well-known settings. The Irish "Easter Rising" of 1916 may be famous in some quarters, but for most of us it's an historical learning experience that detracts from the story (curiously, "Lawrence" and "Zhivago" and "Daughter" take place at round about the same historical time). David Lean's rebels are always rough and often cold characters, but actors like Anthony Quinn and Tom Courtenay were able to give them depth and interesting new angles. Barry Foster, the lead Irish rebel in "Daughter", comes off as simply brutal.Lean also tries something new, a "dream" sequence where Mitchum's character fancies what's going on between his wife and her lover. Unfortunately, Lean shot it so realistically it comes off as merely confusing as it looks so legitimate.Lean had a wonderful eye for epic detail, and he tries to make a storm on the Irish coast as much a character as the desert in "Lawrence" or the snow in "Zhivago." But his characters are basically small, and the actors are unable to rise to storm level. The storm inundates the characters.With "Daughter" Lean shot an epic from a non-epic story. Overall, it is incredibly delectable visually, like a beautiful Easter bunny that's hollow inside. Perhaps it was the casting of the three main actors in the romantic triangle: the woman who can act who lacks sex appeal, the man who can't act, and the actor who is woefully miscast. As it is, actors in minor parts seem to want to take up the slack. Trevor Howard, John Mills and Leo McKern all chew the scenery wonderfully. After two largely humorless epics, Lean uses wry irony here by making Mills' village idiot the only character in the piece who's aware of what's going on.While considered Lean's big flop (it certainly didn't meet expectations) "Daughter" was the eighth highest grossing movie in 1970 (the leader being another love story called . . . "Love Story." But Lean's flick was also trounced at the box office by "MASH," "Patton" and "The Aristocats." "Daughter"barely scraped in five million more than the bizarre "Chariots of the Gods." Compared to Lean's other epics "Daughter" was a financial and artistic disappointment. Today it seems an unfocused jumble that lacks the narrative force or the strong characters of his other epics. But no Lean movie is without merit and "Daughter" is luscious eye candy for those who have the patience to veg through nearly 200 hours of unremitting loveliness, where the scenery and design are miles ahead of the characters. Peter O'Toole was able to stand in the desert and be a focus, the way John Wayne took the eye when he stood in Monument Valley. In the storm of "Ryan's Daughter" the characters are merely dark figures running back and forth and being deluged.

David Lean's eye for landscapes and skies is put to good use on the western shores of Ireland in a picture that surpasses his more well-known masterpiece Dr. Zhivago. The latter film deals with ideas like infidelity, shell-shock, and the national revolutions that accompanied the Great War, but in an almost absentminded way that reflects the uncertainties of its titular protagonist. Ryan's Daughter offers a cast of characters rich enough, both collectively and individually, to encompass all manner of contradictory and complex reactions to national pride, personal desires, betrayal, and forgiveness. Actors like Robert Mitchum, Leo McKern, and Trevor Howard convey deep meaning and feeling under steadfast exteriors.

Lean's Ryan's Daughter is sadly undervalued by many as they thought him past his best, when, five years after Doctor Zhivago, he constructed a whole new village on the Dingle Peninsular on the west coast of Ireland and spent over a year on his indulgence.This beautifully filmed epic, on 70mm negative, might not have the cold harshness of Zhivago, or the scorching majesty of Lawrence of Arabia, but still remains my very favourite film set in and filmed in Ireland.John Mills, as the village idiot steals every scene he's in and leaves us his legacy as a very adaptable actor and Trevor Howard, as a priest. In a brave casting, Robert Mitchum is the teacher who is married to the beautiful and beguiling Sarah Miles, whom she finds his lack of husbandly attention responsible to her becoming attracted to others. The film, a first for Lean, is rated as '15' for a very tasteful outdoor sex scene that involves Miss Miles....The political agenda is always bubbling away, set in both World War 1 and the Uprising, with the locals even siding with the Germans, so anti- British was the feeling. Leo McKern, as the village's Publican, who poses as a Republican and such was Lean's quest for reality that there's actual bloody injury detail incurred during a real storm that the director insisted they filmed in. That it wasn't edited out afterward is also testament to Lean's personal stamp on his cherished creation.Perhaps the star of Ryan's Daughter will always be Freddie Francis' Oscar winning cinematography - the backdrops really are akin to giant, living canvasses. However, unlike the majority of Lean's epics, only two Academy Awards were scooped, the other going to the deserving John Mills.

In retrospect the problems in this film grow larger than they were at the time. Though Mitchum plays the passionless schoolmaster, in real life he was said to have a low or average libido. (Some said because of marijuana, for which he was arrested) It was not long after that at Cannes that he staged the famous topless shot with an actress, perhaps to put his female admirers more at ease, that the sexy leading man lived up to the billing.The wedding night scene in this picture then becomes an incredibly bad inside joke. What curious casting, Mitchum, who looks every bit a man, plays the mooshy schoolmaster, and Jones, a pale flower of a man, can barely stand up, exudes the passion Rosy is seeking. Then of course Sarah Miles was an actress whose reputation tended to proceed her. Audiences looking at this in retrospect are laughing at her school girl shtick. Trevor Howard gave one of his most awkward performances. John Mills served to provide the cutaways whenever the action grew too tense, (not often). I saw one shot in the film which made sense, the Major looks out the window of the lorry at the Irish coastline, and Lean gives us a shot of his view, the light off the ocean, a small island, the view of a military man thinking about the land as an obstacle, an impediment. Good counterpoint.Like Kipling's Light Brigade, this film rode into the valley of film death. I turned it off rather than watch the carnage.