My favorite romantic film is undoubtedly “Ryan's Daughter”, directed by David Lean, a great film director, the same one who made “Passage to India”, a wonderful adaptation of Forster's book. In “Ryan's Daughter” the images are so beautiful and the subtlety of them is breathtaking. The story of this movie is this:
I don't like romantic films very much but this one is special, especially because of the images. This film of course takes on greatness when seen in 70mm theatres. By the way, all David Lean's films are very, very beautiful. David Lean was a great director and nature is very present in his movies.
My mother loved this film. I remember her telling me how it showed without showing the sexual relationship between the two characters by making us see nature. The beauty of the scene where they are going to love each other is marvelous, the silence especially, everything that is there without the need for words, the horses, the water, the trees, the leaves, the flowers...
The film is also a drama about intolerance, war and ignorance. But on the other hand you have love, in all its splendor and compassion, very important on the part of the village idiot and on the part of the husband who understands everything and who loves with this love which is also understanding and forgiveness. A great, great romantic film, hard and soft at the same time, like life itself.
In August 1917, Rosy Ryan, only daughter of the local publican, widower Tom Ryan, is bored with life in Kirrary, an isolated village on the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry in the south-west of Ireland. The villagers are Irish nationalists, taunting British soldiers from a nearby army camp. Tom Ryan publicly supports the recently suppressed Easter Rising, but secretly serves the British as an informer.
Rosy falls in love with the village schoolmaster, widower Charles Shaughnessy. She imagines, though he tries to convince her otherwise, that he will somehow add excitement to her life. They marry and settle in the schoolhouse, but he is a quiet man uninterested in physical love.
Charles takes his schoolchildren to the beach, where he notices Doryan's telltale footprints accompanied by a woman's in the sand. He tracks the prints to a cave and imagines Doryan and Rosy conducting an affair. Local halfwit Michael notices the footprints as well and searches the cave. Finding a button from Doryan's uniform, he pins it on his lapel and proudly parades through the village, but suffers abuse from the villagers. When Rosy comes riding past, Michael approaches her tenderly. Between Rosy's dismay and Michael's pantomime, the villagers surmise that she is having an affair with Doryan.
I don't like romantic films very much but this one is special, especially because of the images. This film of course takes on greatness when seen in 70mm theatres. By the way, all David Lean's films are very, very beautiful. David Lean was a great director and nature is very present in his movies.
My mother loved this film. I remember her telling me how it showed without showing the sexual relationship between the two characters by making us see nature. The beauty of the scene where they are going to love each other is marvelous, the silence especially, everything that is there without the need for words, the horses, the water, the trees, the leaves, the flowers...
The film is also a drama about intolerance, war and ignorance. But on the other hand you have love, in all its splendor and compassion, very important on the part of the village idiot and on the part of the husband who understands everything and who loves with this love which is also understanding and forgiveness. A great, great romantic film, hard and soft at the same time, like life itself.