Cult Cinema: Ryan's Daughter (1970) - Reviewed

Images Courtesy of MGM

British filmmaking titan Sir David Lean, best known for his sprawling Academy Award winning 70mm widescreen epics The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, is regarded as one of the greatest film directors who walked the Earth.  Having won the Best Director Oscar twice for River Kwai and Arabia which also took home the Best Picture Oscars, Lean’s stature as the grandmaster of large-scale epic filmmaking remained all but unchallenged until his 1970 British-Irish set romantic drama Ryan’s Daughter called the director’s caliber into question.  Though performing favorably at the box office, Lean and his recurring screenwriter Robert Bolt took a beating from the critical establishment and Lean was unable to secure financing for future projects for another fourteen years.  Despite the damage done to Lean’s reputation, years later the imperfect but still stirring and sumptuous romantic epic now has the chance for some reassessment from filmgoers unaccustomed to the great director’s one noble “failure”.

 
Isolated in the small Irish village on the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry circa August 1917 amid the first World War is Irish woman Rosy Ryan (Sarah Miles) who finds herself succumbing to ennui bored with her humdrum life surrounded by Irish nationalists who thrive on taunting British soldiers at a nearby camp.  The daughter of a local bartender Thomas Ryan (Leo McKern), she falls for local schoolmaster Charles Shaughnessy (Robert Mitchum) and quickly marries only to discover to her dismay he’s a quiet man disinterested in sex.  Months later, British shell-shocked battle-scarred Major Randolph Doryan (Christopher Jones) happens upon the village where he crosses paths with the desperately smitten Rosy eager for a way out and almost immediately they begin an illicit love affair.  However, her husband Charles has his suspicions about the less-than-secretive lovers but not before the news reaches the villagers who take more than a little disliking to their Romeo & Juliet sexing. 
 
A loose reinterpretation of Gustave Flaubert’s 1857 novel Madame Bovary about forbidden passionate love at a tumultuous historical period ala Doctor Zhivago with a grandiose epic visual backdrop, Ryan’s Daughter is a case of audience expectations and critical fatigue finally turning against a renowned director and screenwriter.  Despite garnering four Academy Award nominations including winning Best Supporting Actor for John Mills in a mute role as the local village idiot Michael and for Freddie Young’s sweeping 65mm cinematography, like most critical targets it was Lean’s turn to fall from grace as it were.  A shame because while not necessarily reaching the artistic heights of what came before, it nevertheless represents another uncompromising, sometimes deathly dark human drama from the great director whose biggest critical “crime” was doing what he always did best.

 
Though met with some measure of controversy concerning its handling of the 1916 Easter Rising and Irish War of Independence, the use of a romantic fable at the epicenter of these particular world events compounded with Freddie Young’s visuals and longtime musical collaborator Maurice Jarre’s evocative score makes Ryan’s Daughter perhaps the most involved romantic triangular Irish-set saga since Far from the Madding Crowd.  Sarah Miles does her best to channel the romantic longings of Julie Christie while Robert Mitchum (reportedly stoned on set) makes the schoolmaster appropriately ineffectual and nebbish-like.  Christopher Jones though needing post-redubbing later for his dialogue readings makes the shell-shocked soldier a twitchy ticking time bomb who somehow or another fills in the gap the bored Rosy Ryan so desperately needs.  Special mention should go to renowned character actors Trevor Howard as a beleaguered pastor and Leo McKern as the titular ineffectual Thomas Ryan who cannot seem to protect his daughter when word of her affairs gets out.
 
As with all four of the David Lean epics encompassing the 1960s through the beginning of the 1970s, there are staggering action set pieces and amid the Irish War of Independence including but not limited to an ocean tide washing needed artillery ashore as tiny humans tied to ropes try to forage for useful remnants.  Also particularly striking is a standoff between the leader of the Irish revolution and Major Doryan with the leader fleeing across a near-magical Irish landscape of water, rock, greenery and the soft mist of a rainbow.  There’s also for all of the rough and ragged harshness of the world of Ryan’s Daughter startling moments of tenderness including an ethereal love scene that earned the film its R rating.  Of the many number of films depicting Ireland onscreen, this is certainly among the most beautiful and painterly.

 
For all of its audiovisual splendor and impassioned performances, Ryan’s Daughter was met with open hostility including but not limited to taking aim at the film’s three-hour running time which caused the director to excise around 17 minutes of footage that has long since been lost to time.  Reportedly Lean was so hurt by the film’s reception at the time he vowed to cease film directing entirely, something which thankfully didn’t happen as he went on to make A Passage to India in 1984.  Obviously the film is nowhere near the indefatigable grandeur of Lawrence of Arabia or Doctor Zhivago which many critics accused Ryan’s Daughter of aping, however on its terms it is nevertheless a striking and stirring picture which does still have a lot to offer modern filmgoers.  An overlooked gem from one of cinema’s finest master craftsman, Ryan’s Daughter while still flying under the radar of many a cinephile is ripe for reassessment and reappraisal as not necessarily a misunderstood masterpiece but definitely a lovely and harsh historical romantic drama that didn’t deserve to be treated so unfairly in its day.

--Andrew Kotwicki