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Adapted by Robert Bolt from Madame Bovary, and filmed around the beautiful Dingle Peninsula, David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter is a characteristic blending of the epic and the intimate. Spoilt Rosy Ryan (Sarah Miles) fosters desires beyond the limits of the village and Robert Mitchum’s stolid schoolteacher offers the promise of a bourgeois outside, as well as the resolution of her sexual curiosity. He provides neither. While she is trapped in a passionless marriage, Ireland rises against British occupation, profiting from German guns and the divided purposes of the First World War. The two strands merge in the exposure of Rosy’s liaison with a shell-shocked British officer (Christopher Jones) as collaboration. These conflicting allegiances, estrangements and longings are written out in Freddie Young’s spectacular sky and seascapes which brood and rumble their way through the film. Ryan’s Daughter may sometimes appear politically naïve, (as in the chorus of earthy nationalist villagers), or hackneyed (the erotic metaphors of Miles’ and Jones’ famous woodland tryst) but there is still much that is arresting and intriguing about it. Lean is at his best in his sympathetic portrait of domestic unhappiness, miscommunication and unfulfilled desire. The film offers a striking account of how the scraps, fragments and bothersome excrescences of personality mark the fragile boundary between allure and repulsion, and why does no one ever mention that this is Ryan’s story as much as Ryan’s daughter’s? It is on his cowardice and duplicity that the plot really turns, and in his singular combination of paternal indulgence and cruelty that Lean might have most to say.

 

Kate Davies on 16th December 2005
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I believe that this is one of Lean's best films. The photography is better than any of other films, especially landscapes. Robert Mitchum, John Mills and Trevor Howard... more >

I believe that this is one of Lean's best films. The photography is better than any of other films, especially landscapes. Robert Mitchum, John Mills and Trevor Howard give fantastic performances. Howard is totally believeable as the local priest. Mills is amazing, as the mentally challenged villager. Mitchum really demonstrates a fine acting talent as the school teacher. The film is worth seeing repeatably for all these reasons. < less