La hija de Ryan

It is such a major tragedy that one of the greatest directors in the history of film, David Lean was so savaged by the critics after pouring vast stores of time, energy and devotion into this production. It has long been clear to me why "Ryan's Daughter" was so poorly received. After Lean's previous epics, everyone was certain that, with all the time and money that went into this film, and with its lengthy running time, it would simply have to be a similar type of show. When people bring such expectations to a movie and are confronted with something so daringly different, they often focus on what they didn't see and miss the virtue of the picture they saw. This film is too "slow", too absorbed with the subtle dynamics of the interaction between its characters for a viewer who is burning to see vast battle scenes, mighty parades and mobs of extras caught up in violent historical struggles. The "spectacle" in this film (and spectacle it is indeed) comes from the exquisite widescreen lensing of stunning Irish coastal scenery. The fabulous storm sequence with villagers battling raging surf in their efforts to retrieve floating contraband is, in my opinion, unmatched in all the thousands of movies I have seen. The drama of the central characters' lives and the depiction of the way the eternal conflicts that continue to trouble their nation work to destroy normal existence for them....this all works for me. I guess there are going to be many who just can't buy into the whole thing, but I can only feel sorry for them. To me, Lean did create an epic here, but not the traditional kind that everyone came to see. It is a "feast-for-the-eyes", intimate epic of the tumultuous emotional life of a little village caught in a swirl of hatred, suspicion, prejudice and seething conflict with an occupying army. One of my dearest hopes is that I may live to see a handsome DVD release of this splendid masterpiece before too much more time elapses. It should NEVER be viewed in some pan-and-scan edition on an ordinary TV! Seen this way with all that glorious cinematography cropped and miniaturized, "Ryan's Daughter" could indeed be seen as a failure. I always wonder how many magnificent David Lean films we will never see as a result of the unproductive years that resulted from the crushing effect on the director of the widespread rejection of this wonderful creation. What a travesty!

It's not hard to see why the critics disliked Ryan's Daughter so much. Films like Midnight Cowboy and Easy Rider had come along and made lots of money and won lots of plaudits. Therefore Ryan's Daughter, a three-hour, 70mm epic must have seemed like something of a fossil – it certainly wasn't hip or trendy. But while Midnight Cowboy and Easy Rider have dated pretty badly, Ryan's Daughter seems timeless.

That's not to say that Ryan's Daughter is without its faults. The story is wafer-thin, some of the writing (surprisingly for Robert Bolt) is lacklustre and the film runs out of steam before the end. But I'm more than able to forgive the film its faults, as it contains some wonderful scenes and some of the best visuals in cinema.

My fondness for Lean's much maligned film is secured in the first few frames. In a long wide shot we see a cliff with a microscopic figure running towards the edge. Then we see the film's heroine, Rosy Ryan (Sarah Miles), chasing a black umbrella that is floating down towards the sea. It's a breathtaking start with some of the best photography committed to film – the skies, in particular, are gorgeous.

And it's the start of the film that I enjoy the most. At the beginning the film is quite light and it has lots of energy. It also presents you with a central character who is full of hope for the future – I like the way Rosy, skipping along to Maurice Jarre's magnificent score, tosses her trashy romantic book into the sea, thinking that she wont have to live vicariously through other people anymore. And then when this is cut against Charles (Robert Mitchum) arriving on the outskirts of the village by bus, you realise what everything means – Rosy's white knight is arriving.

But the film doesn't stay light and breezy for long. In fact, things go downhill on the wedding night – after expecting great things from her husband and this curious piece of human behaviour called sex, Rosy only gets a minute or so of love from Charles. It's not like it is in the books she read.

After this you're introduced to Major Doryan (Christopher Jones), a shell-shocked English soldier who's been sent to Ireland. Right from the first moment you know he and Rosy are going to get involved. Therefore it's a good decision on Lean's part not to delay the inevitable. And I think the scene in the pub where Rosy and the Major meet and begin their affair is easily the best in the film, and certainly one of my favourites in cinema. It's just so imaginatively done. The photography, the editing and the scoring are perfect.

I also like Rosy and the Major's first sexual encounter. It's done without any dialogue (well, until Rosy has come twice) and again it's impeccably shot. And although I'm sure all the critics scoffed at the nature shots, Lean makes it work. And Lean makes it work because he was a genuine romantic. I mean, the reason why the vast majority of romantic films are risible are because they're not sincere – they feel incredibly cynical. But Lean can film a sex scene with shots of forest canopies and not make it laughable. But the scene also works because of Miles' superb acting. Her face captures all the trepidation and excitement that such an encounter would inspire.

It's actually criminal that Miles didn't win an Oscar for her performance (she was nominated). She makes Rosy, a woman who is cheating on her good-natured husband, both despicable and understandable – it's to Miles' credit that she isn't afraid to show Rosy's ugly side; sometimes she's a petulant brat.

And I also think that Mitchum's performance is underrated. He makes a dull character interesting. But I think it helps if you're familiar with Mitchum's work. I mean, it's strange to see the original Max Cady play a cuckold. And it's even stranger to see him last seconds in the sack and get beaten up.

And although his performance gets a lot of stick, I think Christopher Jones is fine in the film. He certainly looks the part. And although a lot of his dialogue had to be cut because the man was a mess on set, it actually works for the character. I mean, with hardly any dialogue it make his romance with Rosy a lot less banal – it gives it a bit mystery. Plus, what would an English officer and a poor Irish schoolteacher's wife have to talk about? The relationship makes much more sense as a sexual one – Rosy may love her husband but the Major gives her what she's missing.

Another refreshing element of Ryan's Daughter is the portrayal of the English and the Irish. All too often in any film set in Ireland, the locals are universally pure hearted while the English are universally loathsome. Here you have small-minded Irish peasants and English soldiers who are just doing their job. You also have an IRA that kills police officers in cold blood. Yeah, the film may be simplistic, but at least it doesn't have a sentimental, misty-eyed view of the common man.

And how can I talk about Ryan's Daughter and not mention the storm sequence? It's quite a remarkable piece of film and again it features some breathtaking photography – there's one shot where the waves crashing against the cliff seem to be blown backwards and another where the spray is sucked upwards into the sky. Anyone with a pair of eyes should enjoy it.

However, as much as I love the film, I do think it splutters towards its conclusion. I certainly don't mind it being three hours long, but the film does seem to run out of ideas towards the end. But that's only a minor complaint. On the whole, I think the film's fantastic.

It's one of the most underrated, but one of the most beautiful epic that ever put on screen. It's directed by David Lean, who made 'The Bridge on the River Kwai', 'Lawrence of Arabia' and 'Doctor Zhivago' before and this film ranks up with his previous works. I can only write about this film in superlatives. Foremost the photography - another excellent work by Freddie Young - honoured with an Academy Award, and the acting by John Mills, who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his outstanding performance as the dumb fisherman. But I would have awarded Sarah Miles (she's "just" nominated for the Best Actress Oscar). Robert Mitchum has never been better, he fills the widow village teacher's character with life. Also great performances by the supporting cast - the aged Trevor Howard as the priest, and Ryan, the two-faced village pub owner, who risks his daughter's life when the villagers abusing her. It's one of the most disgusting character I've ever seen. Robert Bolt's original screenplay is also one of the most complex story I've ever seen. It' as good as the screenplay of 'Doctor Zhivago' which was honoured with an Academy Award and also written by Robert Bolt. This is a film about an outstanding love at an unbearable period of history between an English officer and an Irish woman. It's about sensitivity, courage, hope, admiring and collaborating. The story is so complex, that it's almost impossible to summarize in few words, so I would like to draw the attention to some WONDERFUL scenes: the love scene between the two young lovers, full of symbols and sensitively photographed. It's the most poetic love scene ever. The other beautiful scene is when Robert Mitchum finds his wife's and her lover's footsteps in the beach sand, follows them, imagines what could have happened between the two lovers and becomes sure, that his wife has got another man in her life. And finally of course the storm scene, when the villagers try to save the weapons from the stormy sea. This enormously powerful scene with those poetic scenes above are my favourites in the movie, but the whole movie is full of wonderful scenes and the 3 hours long film remains a religious experience until the last minute.

Last but not least I have to mention the score which can be explained perfectly in 4 words: made by Maurice Jarre. Could be jungle, desert, Russian winter or wild Irish landscapes David Lean always knew how to use these locations to tell his stories. It's pity, that he didn't make any movies until 1984, because of the bad critics. Waste of talent and genius.

So who's right? Is it a dull, lumbering vehicle with beautiful photography and little else, or is it nothing short of a masterpiece?

Nothing short of a masterpiece.

So what explains the critical shellacking it got back in the 1970s, and the lazy kicks in the ribs it continues to get today? I have only a weak suggestion, scarcely an explanation at all:

It was the zeitgeist. The early 1970s - although the trend really began in the late 1960s - saw the rise of a dreary, kitchen-sink style of film-making which is easiest to recognise by its dingy cinematography (although that's not all here is to it); it was the style in which the young lions of 1970s American cinema (Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and if "THX-1138" is the kind of film people say it is, George Lucas) made their name. It's true that time has not been kind to this style, and that the greatest films of the 1970s (like this one) owe nothing to it, but to be fair, it IS possible to make good films in this style, and a few such were made. The greatest asset of standard 1970s film-making is, as it happens, one also possessed by Lean: the ability to be in deadly earnest, to banish any hint of irony or sarcasm when it's not wanted. But this doesn't change the fact that "Ryan's Daughter" is not only different from what was modish around the time it was made; it ADVERTISES this difference. It might very well have the most beautiful cinematography of any film shot anywhere at any time. What's more, gorgeous photography is part of the essence of the film, not something that one can grime down in one's imagination to reveal a distinctively '70s film, in which the composition of shots doesn't matter, there's no atmosphere to speak of and everybody mumbles half-formed thoughts in ungrammatical sentences. This film, simply and unmistakably, doesn't belong in the era in which it was made.

At any rate the stated reasons for condemning he film don't sound at all convincing. Pauline Kael made a big deal of the fact that she couldn't accept Robert Mitchum as a mild-tempered cuckolded husband, which leads me to conclude that (a) she'd just seen "Cape Fear" the previous night, and (b) her brain was tired that week. In a way I can appreciate her difficulty, since when I saw the film, I wasn't aware that it WAS Robert Mitchum until I saw the end credits, so entirely convincing is he (and everyone else, for that matter). Another thing I've seen written a couple of times is that the film is "over-produced", a charge it's hard to make sense of. So Lean made a better film than, strictly speaking, he had to, in order to be faithful to the script? And this is meant to be a CRITICISM?

The only complaint that has justice on its side is the one directed at Maurice Jarre's score, too relentlessly jaunty at ill-chosen moments, particularly in the early arts of the film, without enough meat on the bones of the tunes to justify the fact that the music is really doing little to help. But even here, criticism is exaggerated. A majority of films released since, say, 1990, and this includes a majority of GOOD films, have musical scores that contribute even less, and are even more ill-judged; with "Ryan's Daughter" far more than with those films, complaining about the music seems petty.

Nothing so beautiful as "Ryan's Daughter" could possibly be other than good; the story is a fine one, simple in shape yet morally complex, and it's honestly told, with each point of view made vivid. The three hours are there to be relished. Lean uses the length of his film to make you wish it were longer still.

David Lean's production of "Ryan's Daughter"is an outstanding piece of cinematic artistry. It's a romantic drama set in a small village on the Irish coastline. The mood of the villagers is as changeable as the waves that crash upon the shore. David Lean uses the sea for dramatic effect as he alternates between the village people and the sea itself. John Mills as Michael the inquisitive village idiot is superb as we watch him play with a box of explosives. Sarah Miles plays Rosy torn between the love for her Irish schoolteacher husband (Robert Mitchum) and an unbridled passion for a newly arrived British officer (Christopher Jones). Village gossip virtually destroys Rosy's life. Trevor Howard as the local much-respected priest gives a compelling performance as one who tries to keep the peace in a troubled village. The shell-shocked officer with dreadful memories of his time in the trenches in France has a distinct presence on screen. His part requires little dialogue, the emotions being portrayed through eye and body language. Some of the loveliest scenes I thought were those of the high cliffs and broad beaches where Rosy often walked alone with the incoming tide.Unfortunately footprints in the sand can reveal the most intimate secrets! The wild storm in which the locals attempt to salvage boxes of ammunition from a shipwreck in raging seas is one of the most realistic and exciting sequences I have seen. We are reminded constantly in the film that the sea is the dominant player. Photography, sound effects and music blend into a perfect whole. In one word...a winner!