cmayerle-41064
Considering this was a critical and commercial disappointment, I was surprised to find out that it actually won two Oscars and was nominated for others. First rate acting (Mitchum and Mills, especially) and directing coupled with a great script make this a real classic. Makes you wonder why it fell flat at the theaters?
Benedito Dias Rodrigues
This Movie l'd watched for first time in beginning of 90'on TV...maybe the last part but now on DVD restoration l watched in complete way...and David Lean looks like the same...Genius!!!Even three hours long the movie never boring you all time is interesting,firstly by native Irish people who are the same in all history,good drinking the women is jealous and the priest have to fix up everything,apart from that Mitchum in plenty form as old professor and Sarah Miles fantastic as flaming wife...and the location is simply breathtaking the Ireland's cost provide a wonderful places to Lean tell your story...Mckern in another great performance too!! Anyway a movie to watch & revisit!!!
mrb0775
David Lean's Great Expectations, Bridge on the River Kwai, and Lawrence of Arabia, are all timeless masterpieces, but his Ryan's Daughter will simply have many viewers repeatedly checking the time, wondering when this plodding film is actually going to get somewhere.And please don't misunderstand, I was not looking for an action film. Having seen Ryan's Daughter during its 1970 release I remembered that it had a deliberate pace, when my wife, my mom, and I sat down to watch it on our giant screen TV six years ago. But, boy does RD ever crawl along. The 3 hour long film Schindler's List is longer than Ryan's Daughter, but feels like half it's length. And one of my favorite films, A Man For All Seasons, consists entirely of dialog, with virtually no action, yet its 2 hours feels like 45 minutes compared with the glacial pacing of Ryan's Daughter.If David Lean had carefully edited Ryan's Daughter down to 90 minutes, I feel it could have retained all of its plot elements, while resulting in a much tighter film.Yeah, I had to keep asking my wife and mom to stick with the film, but I still rated Ryan's Daughter as high as 7 due to its beautiful cinematography.I guess Ryan's Daughter stands as a good example to illustrate that even a master of epic film making can not hit a home run with every film.
dreutter@cox.net
In retrospect the problems in this film grow larger than they were at the time. Though Mitchum plays the passionless schoolmaster, in real life he was said to have a low or average libido. (Some said because of marijuana, for which he was arrested) It was not long after that at Cannes that he staged the famous topless shot with an actress, perhaps to put his female admirers more at ease, that the sexy leading man lived up to the billing.The wedding night scene in this picture then becomes an incredibly bad inside joke. What curious casting, Mitchum, who looks every bit a man, plays the mooshy schoolmaster, and Jones, a pale flower of a man, can barely stand up, exudes the passion Rosy is seeking. Then of course Sarah Miles was an actress whose reputation tended to proceed her. Audiences looking at this in retrospect are laughing at her school girl shtick. Trevor Howard gave one of his most awkward performances. John Mills served to provide the cutaways whenever the action grew too tense, (not often). I saw one shot in the film which made sense, the Major looks out the window of the lorry at the Irish coastline, and Lean gives us a shot of his view, the light off the ocean, a small island, the view of a military man thinking about the land as an obstacle, an impediment. Good counterpoint.Like Kipling's Light Brigade, this film rode into the valley of film death. I turned it off rather than watch the carnage.
AD
