Ryans Daughter

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Film Description

Sumptuous Irish shores, raging emotions and brooding decisions, Lean's film may not come anywhere near earlier works but Miles and Mitchum make any interesting pairing.

Film Information

DVD Extras

Audio Commentary by cast and crew; 5-part Anniversary Documentary; Theatrical trailer; Dolby Surround 5.1

Technical Details

Film Media

3 Stills

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Reviews & Articles

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Review by Paul Harhen on 8th July 2004

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.

Review by Kate Davies on 16th December 2005

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.

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Article - "Robert Mitchum - Boxer, Hobo, Actor" by Sue Levan
Thursday 17th May 2007

Robert Mitchum was famously dismissive of his own profession. Indeed the title of his 1975 biography by Mike Tomkies was 'It Sure Beats Working’ which demonstrates the amused detachment with which Mitchum viewed acting. He felt he was one lucky guy to have dropped in...  View article in full

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The Late Great Johnny Mills by Roger Paul

You could always depend on John Mills. Irrespective of the roles he played he could give an emotional portrayal, as good as anyhing out of the Method school. This list gives just a taste of some of his greatest moments on film. A forgotten hero.

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