"Virgo"
left: Sarah Miles in "Ryan's Daughter."Dear Friends,
It is my opinion, UNDERSCORE opinion, that the most passionate, heartfelt love scene ever burned onto film appears in the 1970 movie "Ryan's Daughter." The story centers on a love affair in Ireland during World War I between an Irish girl and a British soldier. David Lean, the director of this movie, is more famous for his fine films "Lawrence of Arabia," "Doctor Zhivago," "Bridge on the River Kwai," and "Passage to India." But "Ryan's Daughter" is my personal David Lean favorite.
This film has such beautiful photography and a story that just downright speaks to me through all of its sad poignancy. All those scenes filmed in western Ireland of the shore and the sea and the islands enchant me so.
Actor Michael Douglas once had a program of his favorite movie scenes of all time, and he mentioned the love scene that "Ryan's Daughter" is known for. It is a sequence of unspeakable beauty. The lovers are alone in a forest, with sunlight streaming through the branches, spider webs glistening, and dandelions swaying. Michael Douglas has also marvelled about the sounds in this scene: a stream rolling by, gusts of wind, leaves shaking, and nothing else.
In short, this is a scene of penetrating sensuality.
I will leave you with a review of "Ryan's Daughter" from off the web by someone named Matthew Wilder. The review doesn't give too much of the plot away in case you ever want to rent the movie:
"David Lean's Ryan's Daughter makes my shoulders shudder, my torso heave, and my throat constrict. This isn't just a sad romantic movie--this is trauma...
Lean's greatest masterpiece, Ryan's Daughter is like a fusion of the sexual intensity of D. H. Lawrence with the cosmic fatalism of Thomas Hardy--sold with the melodramatic brio of a Hollywood movie. Maurice Jarre's theme--one of the finest ever composed for the screen--conspires with the jagged, stormy cliffs and overhanging boulders of cloud to create the most viscerally potent impression of smothered desire I can recall in a movie. This is hundred-proof stuff, so rent at your own risk--it could wreck you for days afterward."
The Sweetest Days,
Ray