Cultural mistrust and false accusations doom a friendship in British colonial India between an Indian doctor, an Englishwoman engaged to marry a city magistrate, and an English educator.
Director:
David Lean
Stars:
Judy Davis,
Victor Banerjee,
Peggy Ashcroft
Based on the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist is about an orphan boy who runs away from a workhouse and meets a pickpocket on the streets of London. Oliver is taken in by the pickpocket ... See full summary »
The middle-class family of a young woman cannot understand why she delays in marrying a respectable young man. They know nothing about her long-standing affair with a Frenchman.
The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during the First World War and then the October Revolution.
Henry Hobson runs a successful bootmaker's shop in nineteenth-century Salford. A widower with a weakness for the pub opposite, he tries forcefully to run the lives of his three unruly ... See full summary »
Director:
David Lean
Stars:
Charles Laughton,
John Mills,
Brenda de Banzie
The Passionate Friends were in love when young, but separated, and she married an older man. Then Mary Justin meets Steven Stratton again and they have one last fling together in the Alps.
Adapted from a play by Noel Coward, Charles and his second wife Ruth, are haunted by the ghost of his first wife, Elvira. Medium Madame Arcati tries to help things out by contacting the ghost.
Director:
David Lean
Stars:
Rex Harrison,
Constance Cummings,
Kay Hammond
Noel Coward's attempt to show how the ordinary people lived between the wars. Just after WWI the Gibbons family moves to a nice house in the suburbs. An ordinary sort of life is led by the ... See full summary »
World War I seems far away from Ireland's Dingle peninsula when Rosy Ryan Shaughnessy goes horseback riding on the beach with the young English officer. There was a magnetic attraction between them the day he was the only customer in her father's pub and Rosy was tending bar for the first time since her marriage to the village schoolmaster. Then one stormy night some Irish revolutionaries expecting a shipment of guns arrive at Ryan's pub. Is it Rosy who betrays them to the British? Will Shaugnessy take Father Collin's advice? Is the pivotal role that of the village idiot who is mute? Written by
Dale O'Connor <daleoc@interaccess.com>
Trevor Howard was undergoing marital difficulties during filming. When his wife Helen paid a visit to Ireland but stormed out of a party after an argument with him, she was nearly killed in a car accident on the treacherous narrow, winding roads. See more »
Goofs
Father Collins wears a traditional black garment with white "dog collar" but apparently in the period this film was set, the law forbad a catholic priest to dress this way. See more »
The art of David Lean in making film masterpieces from the 1940s to this last epic in 1970 is now a forgotten talent. Lean was the best at producing cinema that really was for the cinema. You can feel the cameras rolling, the scenes moving at a pace moviegoers can absorb and thrill to. Ryan's Daughter belongs with the best of Lean, and has long been underrated. The acting is wonderful - John Mills is outstanding, Leo McKern and Trevor Howard impeccable, Sarah Miles and Robert Mitchum excellent with just the right amount of awkwardness the parts require. Christopher Jones gave just the right amount of weight to the shell-shocked, traumatised World War I survivor of the trenches. The scenery lent itself to panoramic filming and the storm was a fantastic achievement on film for the period.
Unfortunately, Lean's epics don't come over half so well on the small screen. I wish we could see all these films again in the cinema. I saw the revival of Gone With The Wind in 1968 in a big London cinema and it was marvelous. Wouldn't it be wonderful to see Lawrence of Arabia, Dr Zhivago, and Ryan's Daughter again on the big screen?
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The art of David Lean in making film masterpieces from the 1940s to this last epic in 1970 is now a forgotten talent. Lean was the best at producing cinema that really was for the cinema. You can feel the cameras rolling, the scenes moving at a pace moviegoers can absorb and thrill to. Ryan's Daughter belongs with the best of Lean, and has long been underrated. The acting is wonderful - John Mills is outstanding, Leo McKern and Trevor Howard impeccable, Sarah Miles and Robert Mitchum excellent with just the right amount of awkwardness the parts require. Christopher Jones gave just the right amount of weight to the shell-shocked, traumatised World War I survivor of the trenches. The scenery lent itself to panoramic filming and the storm was a fantastic achievement on film for the period.
Unfortunately, Lean's epics don't come over half so well on the small screen. I wish we could see all these films again in the cinema. I saw the revival of Gone With The Wind in 1968 in a big London cinema and it was marvelous. Wouldn't it be wonderful to see Lawrence of Arabia, Dr Zhivago, and Ryan's Daughter again on the big screen?