The Score Magazine - Archive February 2009 issue! | Page 9

cinema
Ryan’s Daughter
(1970)
George Thomas
I
f it’s true, as one reviewer has written, that every
frame of David Lean’s new film, “Ryan’s Daughter,”
is “a work of pure and undiluted genius,” there
are, according to my calculations, approximately
276,480 works of pure and undiluted genius in the 192-
minute movie, which should put “Ryan’s Daughter” on a
par with such other repositories as the Louvre, the Met-
ropolitan Museum and the Hermitage.
The film story was set in a tiny seaside village, Kirra-
ray. The local publican’s daughter, Rosy Ryan, played by
Sarah Miles (then Bolt’s wife) is infatuated with Charles
Shaughnessy, a mild-mannered school-teacher played
by Robert Mitchum. She coaxes him into marrying her,
but their wedding night and the ones that follow shatter
her romantic illusions. The village priest, Father Collins,
played by Trevor Howard, is outraged when Rosy insists
there must be more to marriage than what she can find
in hers.
‘Why must there be? Because Rosy Ryan wants it?’ he
roars at her.
She has a brief but tragic affair with a handsome Brit-
ish Army officer, Major Doryan, played by Christopher
Jones, whose time in the trenches has left him morose
and shell-shocked. Her husband has a different kind of
shock when he discovers what she’s up to. As their mar-
riage heads for the rocks, so does Shaughnessy, but only
to sit on them and stare out to sea while he struggles to
come to terms with Rosy’s infidelity.
When a shipment of weapons intended for Republican
activists is intercepted by British troops, everyone in the
village suspects that Rosy has tipped off her lover. They
swarm around the schoolhouse, drag her outside, rip off
her outer clothes and crop her long hair. The informer
was actually her cowardly father, played by Leo McK-
ern, who diverts suspicion from himself by joining in the
condemnation of Rosy, although he hasn’t the stomach
to stay and witness her humiliation. Later that night on
the beach, a distracted Doryan blows himself to pieces
with some IRA explosives discovered there. The Shaugh-
nessys leave Kirraray for good, hoping to put the tragic
events behind them.
The actress who would play the central role of Rosy
was always going to be Sarah Miles. The writer had cre-
ated the role with his wife in mind. Although she was
twenty-five years old at the time playing someone much
younger, Bolt and David Lean were unanimous in their
choice. It had not always been that way. When they had
collaborated on Doctor Zhivago Lean had wanted Sarah
in the role of Lara, because, he said, she was the only
actress he could name, apart from Celia Johnson, who
‘acts with her eyes’.
Sarah Miles in Ryan’s Daughter
A scene from Ryan’s Daughter
Sarah Miles and Christopher Jones in Ryan’s daughter