Ryan's Daughter (Two-Disc Special Edition)
by David Lean
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Leo Mckern, Robert Mitchum, Sarah Miles, Sir John Mills, Trevor HowardDirector: David Lean
Brand: MILES,SARAH
Producer: Anthony Havelock-allan
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Widescreen, 2.40:1
Running Time: 108 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-02-07
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Model: 65170
Studio: Warner Home Video
Movie Reviews of Ryan's Daughter (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Movie Review: David Lean's Best
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't know if this is David Lean's best film, because I haven't seen his earlier movies, but it is better than all his big budget movies, starting with "The Bridge Over The River Kwai, and it is one of the all-time great movies. A relevant fact is that the screenwriter, Robert Bolt, was married to Sarah Miles, the actress who played Rose. They later divorced, and rumors had it that their relationship was the inspiration for the script. If so, Bolt rose above his personal pain in heroic fashion, because the straying wife in the movie is depicted very sympathetically.
The movie received bad reviews originally, most famously from Pauline Kael. Since I haven't read her review, I'm not sure what her complaint was. I've always suspected that it didn't click with audiences at the time because Robert Mitchum was cast completely against type. Up to that point he had been one of the movies' sexiest leading men and always got the girl. In Ryan's daughter he was the older, cuckolded husband, who seems to be sexually repressed. I think this was too much of a shock for his fans (which probably included all adult filmgoers of the time.) Audiences don't like reminders of their own mortality. My God! Mitchum is that old?? Yet it was one of the most powerful performances of his life. He even managed a fine Irish accent.
Also,the political situation between the British and Irish at that time may have confused American audiences, who probably thought Ireland was part of England and couldn't figure out why the picturesque locals hated the handsome soldier. Why are all those people with British accents (?) shooting at their own soldiers? The fact that it was happening during World War One was probably also confusing to Americans, who don't know their own history, much less Ireland's. And yet, the inter-relationship between the political events and the two love stories is perfectly handled by the script. In nearly all other war movies, the love story seems pitifully out of place. The audience simply can't figure out how that beautiful woman got herself into that battle, nor how she manages to keep her dress so spotless in the midst of all that mud! Or,if a love story throws in some historical events, it all seems like boring, unnecessary exposition. Here every word counts. Every scene between the lovers raises the sexual tension, and every scene with the Irish and the soldiers raises the stakes for everyone.
There are two scenes in this movie which vault it into the best-of-all-time category. Both are the work of Robert Bolt, the scriptwriter, and both are entirely visual, with no dialogue. Both include the village idiot, a mute.
SPOILER FOLLOWS
In the first of these two scenes, the handsome soldier, new in town, stops in the pub to have a drink, trying to make friends with the locals. Rose, the barmaid, tries to be rude, since she has been taught to hate the British, but you can tell she is attracted. They are alone in the pub, except for the crazy mute, who begins to swing his leg mindlessly, banging it against the bar. It startles the soldier. Bang, bang, bang, in perfect merciless rhythm. The soldier tries to ignore it. The mute is happy, clueless. Bang, bang, bang. The soldier begins to crumble in front of our eyes as we see flashbacks of him in a trench in France, cringing in terror during a bombardment. Finally, he collapses, gasping on the floor, suffering a full-blown panic attack. Rose rushes to his aid, comforting him until his breathing slows and the horror leaves his eyes. It is a shockingly intimate moment, and entirely non-sexual. Yet after that moment, they are intimate, and they know it. He recovers, apologetic and confused, and leaves the pub. Rose thinks she knows why he was transferred from the Western Front to her sleepy Irish village: he was a coward under fire. But wait, he wears the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest award for bravery....
The second of these perfect, wordless scenes is carefully prepared. The mute begins to imitate the new captain. He begins to follow him, marching in his clumsy way, saluting. And he puts bottle caps and ribbons on the breast of his tattered clothes to imitate the soldier's decorations. The villagers understand. Ah, he is imitating the captain. One day he is doing his impersonation in the main street, and the villagers are laughing. Rose appears and the mute walks up to her and puckers up, expecting a kiss. Suddenly, the villagers know the horrible truth about their Rose. The mute has seen her kissing the captain! Rose instantly knows that she has been betrayed, and that there is nothing she can say in her defense. From this point on, the concluding tragedy is inevitable.
These two wordless scenes are perfect cinema and earned John Mills (the mute) an Oscar. There is a third instance of a major plot point being made visually, that is nearly as good. There is dialogue, but it is used by the characters to hide rather than reveal. Rose has been out riding her horse. Her husband says "Where did you go?" She replies, "To the mountains." She is in the other room, removing her riding clothes. He says, "So, you didna go to the beach, then?" She says again, "No, to the mountains." Then a closeup reveals that he is looking at her hat, which she left on the kitchen table. He is looking at the grains of sand on the bill of the hat. We see his face, we know that he knows she is lying, and why, and we also know that he will not confront her. These three scenes define the difference between books and movies. They are so perfect I can't figure out why Steven Spielberg hasn't stolen them.
Another point that irritated the politically correct critics was the horrible punishment of the unfaithful wife, which seemed so Victorian in the hip 1970s. I would like to point out that Rose is not punished for adultery but for treason, and that she is innocent. Furthermore, she chooses not to save herself by revealing the name of the real traitor.
I haven't seen this movie in thirty-seven years and I have never forgotten those scenes, and many, many others. Aside from the story and the characters, it also has the incredible photography that you can see in every David Lean movie. I'll bet a million people have visited the west of Ireland to experience personally the incredible landscapes they first saw in "Ryan's Daughter.
Summary of Ryan's Daughter (Two-Disc Special Edition)
An unhappily married Rosy Ryan falls in love with a British officer that she meets while tending bar in her father's pub on Ireland's Dingle peninsula.Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 7-FEB-2006
Media Type: DVD
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