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| David Lean (right) with producer Anthony Havelock-Allan |
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| Lean braving the coastal winds |
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| John Mills |
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| Lean with Robert Mitchum and Sarah Miles |
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| Dunmore Head, most westerly expanse of Europe |
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| schoolhouse in Dunquin |
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| constructed village of Kirrary |
RYAN’S DAUGHTER B+ Great Britain (206 mi) 1970 ‘Scope d: David Lean
The most-maligned film of Lean’s career which spans seven decades, inspired by Flaubert’s Madame Bovary where a romantically disillusioned young wife of an older man has an affair with a younger suitor with disastrous consequences, given a 20th century update, set in an isolated Irish coastal community with Catholic roots in 1916 during the quest for an Irish national identity, as opposed to middle-class France, and while the film differs in many ways from the novel, the other characters such as the girl’s father and the village priest are loosely inspired by the novel, in addition to an infamous “ride in the woods” sequence. Playing with an Intermission, with musical overtures covering the empty space, this heavily romanticized morality tale speaks of lust, yearning, masculinity, and cowardice, yet the basic plot of a bored young wife taking a lover are overshadowed by the calamitous effects of WWI raging in Europe, while also set in the historic wake of the Easter Rising 1916 Ireland when Ireland was still a reluctant part of the United Kingdom and was rebelling against the unwelcome British colonial presence, the start of the Troubles and the Irish War of Independence. No one made grand sweeping epics quite like Lean, so given a historical backdrop that carries as much or more weight than the modest love story at the center, critics assailed the film at the time, expecting something along the lines of Oscar-winning blockbusters like THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (1957), LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962), and DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965), which made more money than all his other films combined, instead derided as an old-fashioned exponent of an outmoded model of filmmaking, culminating with a disastrous reception by New York critics where Lean was mercilessly grilled for several hours, led by a punitive assault by Pauline Kael, who described it as “gush made respectable by millions of dollars tastefully wasted,” and dismissed with such disparagement that it personally affected Lean, who wouldn’t make another film for 14-years, still viewed today as the film that killed David Lean’s career, David Lean on the critical reaction to Ryan's Daughter YouTube (3:21). Nonetheless, it’s a lushly filmed and immensely pleasurable experience that initially screened on 70mm. Given the negative overreaction of critics at the time, what’s perhaps surprising is that despite its expansiveness, what really stands out is how beautifully the film accentuates narrative revelations from small details, where there is a tenderness and exposed intimacy at the heart of the film, juxtaposed against a lynch mob mentality of rage and venom targeting a woman whose moral indiscretions are only heightened by her choice of lover, a British officer, an unforgivable sin at the time, subject to their own brand of mob punishment, reminiscent of the widow’s punishment (Irene Papas) in ZORBA THE GREEK (1964), where the film also accentuates the forbidden love of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, the 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, where the spectacular cliffs overlooking the ocean represent the hidden dangers associated with the moors, symbolizing the wild threat posed by nature. Something of a full-blown sensory experience, a film that cries out to be seen on the big screen, arguably the most visually impressive film ever made in Ireland, the protagonist, Rosy Ryan (Sarah Miles), is the daughter of Tom Ryan (Leo McKern), a well-off bar owner in the fictional village of Kirrary who spends plenty of time talking about Irish independence, growing infatuated with her widowed schoolmaster, Charles Shaughnessy (Robert Mitchum, intentionally cast against type, speaking with a very respectable Irish accent), twenty years her elder, who taught her the romantic ideals of literature and music, including Byron and Beethoven, where a simple touch of her shoulder becomes powerfully emblematic of a personalized connection (the same gesture was used in Lean’s 1945 film BRIEF ENCOUNTER), signaling the start of their relationship, and soon marries him. She quickly realizes, however, that her bookish, quiet-tempered husband possesses none of the passionate attributes she had imagined, growing restless and dissatisfied with her life, yearning for a romanticized, more physical rapture, with the film aligning with a female perspective, completely identifying with a young girl undergoing a sexual awakening, recalling Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Valerie a týden divu) (1970), made at the same time, though told in a completely different context, where it’s remarkable how different artists approach the same subject. Subsequently, Rosy falls for a British officer stationed at an army garrison just outside the village, Major Randolph Doryan (Christopher Jones), walking with a limp, shell-shocked from the war, sent to a remote outpost to recover, whose mental and physical vulnerabilities are repeatedly accentuated, having visible episodes that leave him debilitated, perhaps symbolizing the fractious instability of the British empire, and commits adultery with him in her quest for sexual satisfaction, exposed by the village idiot Michael (a muted Oscar-winning John Mills, the subject of some controversy, as the wretchedness of his physical deformities allow the actor to preen for the camera in every scene, embellishing the Beauty and the Beast theme), while the strong Catholic and nationalist community in which she lives gradually becomes aware of her transgression. After the arrest of IRA activists harbored by the villagers, Rosy is falsely accused of being a British sympathizer and is viciously attacked for her treacherous affair. Ostracized by the townspeople, the realization that his presence has brought her such humiliating disgrace leads Doryan to kill himself, while Rosy, on the brink of marital separation, is seen leaving the village with Charles at the end of the film, unclear whether they will remain together or not. Visually, the film is spectacular, a truly rare discovery, yet it is overlong and feels like an anachronism in the grandiose style of filmmaking, as they certainly don’t make films like this anymore.
After adapting the literary works of others, Lean and his team of collaborators preferred an original script, written by leftist playwright Robert Bolt, spending ten arduous months, written specifically for his wife at the time, Sarah Miles, while Freddie Young’s sumptuous cinematography won an Academy Award, the last theatrical movie photographed entirely in the Super Panavision 70mm format until Ron Howard’s FAR AND AWAY (1992), also shot on the same Irish coast, used again for Kenneth Branagh’s HAMLET (1996) and Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master (2012), while the music of Maurice Jarre feels uninspired, retreading familiar territory, and is perhaps the weakest aspect of the picture. While initial screenings could be seen on 70mm, in all its intended glory, providing immaculate clarity, accentuating not only the spectacular panoramic vistas, the magnificent landscapes, the cliffs, the sea, and the adjacent beach, but also the close-ups on faces, yet that format is rarely screened anymore, as theaters require major technical adjustments, though in 2002 the Academy provided a restored 70mm print. Hoping to recreate that invisible sensation which comes from the silent and intimate experience of reading a book, where the illustrative images onscreen reflect the sensory suggestions from the pages, the film turned a profit, but was largely misunderstood, not the blockbuster success MGM was hoping for, incredibly taking an entire year to shoot, initially running at three hours and 43-minutes, yet criticized in previews for its length and poor pacing, with Lean trimming 17-minutes of footage which has never been recovered. While Lawrence and River Kwai were almost exclusively heroic male films, with a near total eradication of women, Zhivago and this film altered the mode by dramatizing the importance of female characters, with many at the time questioning whether an epic was compatible to a woman’s role. In an age dominated by male aspirations, Rosy dreams of an idealized fulfillment of love, with the film mining the wilder and darker sides of her nature, roundly condemned by an undertow of critical misogyny expressing a marked contempt for any associated sense of female significance in popular culture, representative of the knee-jerk response to women’s liberation, as the backlash narrowly confined this to a “woman’s picture.” While touching on war and national struggle, the film was condemned for being preoccupied with a smaller story, accentuating the world of human emotions, deemed unworthy of Lean’s epic treatment, where there may have even been a disconnect between Bolt’s more succinct view of the subject on a smaller scale, and Lean’s more grandiose scale of filmmaking, which was at a crossroads, representative of an entire school of filmmaking with a sprawling production schedule, a massive budget, and even the length of the running time. Much of the delays and expanded production time on this film were due to inclement weather, including long stretches of rain, something completely out of Lean’s control, forcing him to make a controversial decision to shoot on the sunny beaches of South Africa, specifically the Noordhoek Beach, located a few miles from Cape Town, remarkable for the seemingly endless white sands, standing in stark contrast to the rocky Irish shoreline with barely any hint of sun. While hardly a stodgy period piece, the film has a passionately conceived state of adolescence featuring explicit sexual scenes, with dramatic themes about the untamed wildness of the human spirit which cannot be controlled that largely appealed to a burgeoning youth movement who were taking over the movie industry with films like Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), and MASH (1970), featuring a lone individual against society (the subject of many westerns), with young people forced to confront society’s more established puritanical conservatism, running into a wall while seeking self-expression and a freedom of individualism. Rosy is not an ordinary girl, but wants something more, seeking a larger happiness and a sense of self-importance, yearning for an acute passion in life. The film oddly mirrors Lean’s own personal experience, coming from a family of artists, inventors, and engineers, rebelling against his Quaker upbringing, which strove to develop a morally driven foundation, as his parents had forbidden him to go to the cinema regularly, so as an adult he was described as something of a free-spirited womanizer, having difficulty in relationships, always viewed as a perfectionist, ending up with six different marriages. While Rosy is the central figure of the film, seen at the outset as a rather solitary and aimless girl, daughter of a saloonkeeper, admired from afar by the village idiot Michael, while the gruff village priest Father Hugh Collins (Trevor Howard, who along with John Mills starred in early David Lean films from the 40’s, appearing here as character actors), continually displays interest and concern for her welfare, providing a rustic moral center for the village. The political ramifications were largely ignored when it was first released, but have become a heated topic over time, set during a time when a distant war and colonial struggles played such a huge importance to the Irish nation, yet those seemingly faraway events irrevocably change the lives of the film’s central characters, though the film thoroughly ignores the underlying causes of the colonial dispute, while sympathizing with the villager’s hatred for the occupying British, where the most dramatic scene is an outburst of support for the IRA in the midst of a spectacular storm, with thunderous waves crashing against the rocks, hoping to recover bundles of German weapons that have washed ashore. Despite millions dying in Europe, the Irish population would rather side with the Germans than support the British, with the entire town volunteering their help in a rare display of unity and pride, only to find their aspirations crushed by an informer in their midst. The film was hugely popular in Dublin, playing for nearly a year.
The Irish landscape provides all the natural splendor and spectacle the filmmakers were looking for, with dramatic cliffs overlooking the sea, shot on the Dingle Peninsula, including the Cliffs of Moher, Tig Slea Head, Coumeenole Beach, Inch Beach, and Dunmore Head, constructing a town for the film that included houses, shops, a schoolhouse, a church, and a pub, which were generously donated by MGM but demolished afterwards due to a dispute between landowners, with only the schoolhouse built on the cliffs of Dunquin at the most westerly tip of the peninsula still remaining in a deteriorating state, though in 2015 the roof fell in during a storm, which is unfortunate, as had the town remained it could have brought substantial income to the local economy, as people might have traveled worldwide to visit. Yet the largesse of the landscape can only emphasize the relative smallness of Rosy’s troubles compared to the historical significance of the upheaval taking place within Ireland’s borders, where a guerrilla war was fought from 1919 to 1921 between the Irish Republican Army and British forces, with Irish nationalists wanting full independence rather than British home rule, but the Anglo-Irish Treaty established part of the country would become an Irish Free State, 26 out of the 32 counties of Ireland, with British forces withdrawing, while Northern Ireland, making up the remaining six counties, exercised its right under the Treaty to opt out and remain under British rule, a decision that has led to escalated violence on both sides. In 1969, a year before the film was released, the IRA split into two groups, inspired by young nationalist leaders like John Hume, Austin Currie, and Bernadette Devlin (Ulster (1970), seen in a ten-minute newsreel film about the Troubles), that refused to accept the status quo, as voting districts had been gerrymandered so badly that even cities with a Catholic majority were controlled politically by Protestant loyalists for 50 years, so Provisional IRA paramilitary groups instigated targeted acts of violence as a means of self-defense, combatting marauding loyalist gangs attacking their neighborhoods, an exhausting set of circumstances that may have heavily influenced a viewing audience unable to distinguish the difference between freedom fighters and terrorists, as they were labeled by the British. This is the unstated backdrop of the film, with Lean more interested in painting an expressionist picture of emotional rather than political upheaval. But filming didn’t exactly go as planned, some of which is captured from excerpts released in Paul Benedict Rowan’s fifteen-years-in-the-making, behind-the-scenes book, Making Ryan’s Daughter: The Myths, Madness and Mastery (A clifftop Ferrari crash, an affair and a mental unravelling), where we learn that during the filming of the movie, Robert Mitchum planted marijuana plants in the back garden of the Milltown House in Dingle where he and the production crew were staying, developing a propensity for sharing hash brownies, giving many their first experience with the plant. Various accidents also occurred during filming, with Christopher Jones totaling his Ferrari on the edge of a cliff and nearly killed himself in a James Dean-like accident on a winding road, but he was never able to capture a British accent, displayed an inability to emote for the camera, or hit a mark and deliver a line at the same time, so his voice was dubbed by Julian Holloway, yet his performance remains one of the most criticized aspects of the film, with Lean limiting his speaking, trying to shoot around it, conveying a sense of tone and atmosphere by image alone, becoming something of a mysterious figure with a shadowy intrigue, appearing as a darkened silhouette on the horizon, almost as if Rosy’s imagination conjured up his existence, reminiscent of how German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder portrayed his lead character in his final film QUERELLE (1982), using a non-German speaking American in the lead role. Mitchum’s marijuana came into play when American actor Jones and British actress Sarah Miles did not get along, with Jones refusing to rehearse with her while also refusing to touch her during a scheduled sex scene, holding up production for days, causing Lean no end of grief, and his behavior was increasingly erratic, apparently still affected by the death of former girlfriend Sharon Tate in the Manson murders (What You Need to Know About the Manson Family Murders), while also engaged to British actress Olivia Hussey (eventually broken off) who was living nearby in a house on Cielo Drive (Olivia Hussey, star of Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet: 'I was wild'), with Hussey’s autobiography The Girl On the Balcony contending Jones violently raped her. At one point Miles and Mitchum conspired with Hussey to lace his food with marijuana, also putting a sedative in Jones’ breakfast without his knowledge, spiking the milk in his breakfast cereal, thinking he needed it to help calm him down, rendering him incapable of completing a scene, spiraling completely out of control, having a mental unraveling, believing he was having a nervous breakdown, a likely combination of all the negativity surrounding him at the time, where his numerous entanglements with the Hollywood “in crowd” eventually took their toll, prompting him to retire from acting shortly afterwards, becoming a painter and sculptor instead. The much discussed love scene in the woods takes on a highly visual context, as if drawn from the novel, beginning with a horseback ride, given a kind of passive consent from Charles, who urges Doryan, for safety reasons, to break her horse, actually encouraging healthy exercise, with a hesitant Rosy initially reluctant, yet the immaculate field of purple flowers that line the inside of the woods reflect the long, naturalistic description of the novel, where the metaphoric allure of sensuality draws her in, co-mingling with her illicit desires, expressed in a long, silent ride through the woods, with the warm breath of the horses turning into misty condensation from the cold air, a contemplative passage that erupts in sexual release, Affair In The Woods | Ryan’s Daughter | Warner Archive YouTube (4:23). Lean’s heavy-handed symbolism may be a bit thick, but this descriptive passage from Flaubert’s novel is central to his work, emphasizing a changing role of women in society, stressing the importance of female sexual satisfaction, with the film offering an eloquent counterpoint not often found in other cinematic adaptations.
It’s important to point out how Rosy idealized her former schoolteacher out of all proportions, expecting to be a changed woman from her heavily romanticized sexual expectations, The Sacrament of Marriage | Ryan’s Daughter | Warner Archive YouTube (2:22), yet the film makes it abundantly clear that absolutely nothing is changed afterwards, as everything at the exuberant wedding party is exactly the same, with music and dancing and celebratory food, where passions are only intensified by the prevalence of alcohol, yet Rosy is dismally sad and disappointed, unable to explain the emptiness in her heart. When she tries to explain her feelings to Father Collins, she wants the world to conform to her strong desires, drawing a quick slap to the face from the Father, so hard that she falls to her knees (an emphatic patriarchal denial of female desire), finding her attitude girlishly self-centered, surprised to find such a vanity-driven opinion from a well-educated young woman who seemingly has it all. Charles, on the other hand, has no false illusions, relying upon an educated and levelheaded emotional foundation to carry him through, perhaps best expressed in a scene where he and Rosy are collecting flowers, with Charles pressing them into a book that flattens them out, leaving Rosy flabbergasted, as she prefers the wildness of their natural state. Yet surely one of the more unusual scenes takes place at a picturesque scene on the beach, another example of the sunny South African sands, where Charles has led his class on an oceanside excursion searching for cuttlefish, yet he’s taken by two very distinct footprints in the sand, which seemingly tell their own story. At first interpreting them as two friends or lovers out on a pleasant walk, but his imagination gets the best of him, suspecting Rosy’s infidelity, turning into a surrealistic vision of Charles hiding behind a rock while Rosy and Doryan enact a scene out of his own daydream, accompanied by Beethoven’s Eroica, both in overly stylish attire, Doryan in full dress uniform and Rosie in a glamorous gown with a flamboyant white hat, with Doryan reaching down into a tidepool and offering her a seashell, leaving him a passive spectator, An Affair Uncovered | Ryan’s Daughter | Warner Archive YouTube (5:36). Expressed in a long take, much like a passage from a novel, this sequence is symbolic of the powerlessness he feels, aware of his wife’s transgressions, yet idly sitting by. This helplessness is contrasted by the violent eruption of the town’s own brand of retribution, acting in unison, like a Greek chorus, handing out their harsh judgment, expressed with a haunting cruelty, with the crowd pinning Charles down to the ground, forcing him to watch, with emotions spiraling out of control with only vengeance on their minds as they strip Rosy and savagely cut her hair, branding her a traitor, Shamed By The Townspeople | Ryan’s Daughter | Warner Archive YouTube (6:08). If you look at Northern Ireland in the late 60’s, women colluding with the enemy were tarred and feathered in the nationalist communities, with Irish betrayal examined in one of John Ford’s best early films that is nearly forgotten today, The Informer (1935), with Ford winning an Academy Award for best director. This comes after the stunning storm sequence, unequalled in visual spectacle, shot from right inside the storm, managing to show colossal waves exploding over the rocks in an instantaneous burst of water spray, creating rivers of water streaming off the cliffs, with the wind creating havoc for the villagers arriving in droves, all acting as one eagerly helping the IRA militants in their fight against the British occupation, risking their lives against the ferocity of the storm, where their lofty expectations mirror Rosy’s pre-marital thoughts, expecting a new and different world outcome, expressed in an adrenal rush of excitement, surprising even the hardened IRA gun runners, leading to a celebratory march that resembles the Pied Piper magically luring the entire town into a promised place “where everything was strange and new,” yet they immediately encounter an awaiting British military unit that was tipped off, with rifles and machine guns pointed directly at them, leaving them no avenue of escape, returning to a world exactly the way it was, arresting the IRA militants, shooting their escaping leader Tim O’Leary (Barry Foster), dashing their dreams in a sudden reversal of fortune. The vitriol expressed by the town vehemently directed at Rosy afterwards expresses a kind of primal wrath, as someone is always to blame, though in this case she had nothing to do with it, while her father, the real culprit, flees the scene, but her immoral sexual dalliance with a British officer registers unmitigated contempt, which strangely became public knowledge through Michael, the village idiot, publicly parading through the streets while proudly displaying one of the Major’s war ribbons, recreating their embellished romance through his own theatrical mime, followed down the street afterwards by an unknowing Rosy, with the entire town simply gawking at her, rendering their silent judgment. Departing from Flaubert, this film allows the heroine to live, with Doryan taking her place, seen waiting by the sea for the final disappearance of the setting sun, mirroring a famous cut in Lawrence when a blown-out match ignites an Arabian sunset, while here the sinking sun cuts to an extreme close-up of a match that detonates explosives on the beach. Charles and Rosy depart for a new life in Dublin, still shunned by the entire village except for one brave young girl who leaves them flowers, ending on an ambiguous note of uncertainty, told on an epic scale, but reduced at the end to a very private matter.
'Ryan's Daughter': The Proof of David Lean's Versatility ... Cinephilia & Beyond
