Product: Ryan's Daughter (Two-Disc Special Edition) (2006)
Rating: 4.0
Beautiful Irish coast is star of this over-blown melodrama
Director David Lean and screenwriter Robert Bolt are the same team that brought us Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago, so expectations prior to the release of this film must have been sky-high. That being the case, I can understand why this film was panned by critics in 1970. The pace is glacial. At times, the film is so slow it seems to be going backward. The film clocks in at 3 hours, 20 minutes, but the story could easily been told in under 2 hours, without sacrificing a single pertinent detail. Easily.That being said, there are some wonderful performances here. John Mills, who plays Michael, the village idiot, won an Oscar for his outstanding performance. But the strongest performance was Trevor Howard's. Howard plays the village priest, heroically trying to exert an uplifting influence on his parishoners, most of whom are barely smarter than Michael, and much more savage. Robert Mitchum is cast very much against type; in most roles, he exudes casual but strong virility, yet in this role he is called upon to play a milquetoast aesthete who cannot sexually satisfy his young wife. And he does an excellent job, nailing the Irish accent, to boot.The real star of the movie, however, is the beautiful west coast of Ireland, lovingly photographed. This DVD looks absolutely gorgeous in an anamorphic widescreen 2-disk transfer. The scenery alone is well worth the price of this DVD, even if you ignore the bloated, melodramatic plot.