David Lean's - "Ryan's Daughter"

This is Lean in his “epic” years where the wide screen, the color, the vistas, the colorful settings and vistas threaten to (and sometimes does) overwhelm the story Lean is trying to tell. In the review that, according to lore, sent Lean into a 14 year long retirement from film making, Pauline Kael dismissed him as a “technician” – a man interested only in the technology at his disposal who gives scant regard to the emotional core of his tale. To a certain extent this is true and it echoes some of the thoughts I was having as I watched the DVD, my thumb poised over the fast forward scan button, sorely tempted to rush ahead past all of the empty spectacle and even repetition. Twice, maybe three times, we get a situation where the villagers are getting out of control but the priest (Trevor Howard) shows up just in time, pushing his way through the mob, to put a stop to the violence. But after it was over and some days passed, it was the small story, the personal story, that I retained. Many of the scenes and performances remained with me. The David Lean of “Brief Encounter,” “The Sound Barrier,” and “Hobson’s Choice” had shone through. Even some things I had scoffed at while watching, like John Mills’ embarrassing performance (for which he won an Oscar) as a challenged adult (the “village idiot”) – had a final scene that moved and astonished me. I could go on like this – one sentence heaping scorn, the next praising. Sometimes, as with Mill’s performance, doing both at once.