Archival 70mm print!

That undisputed master of the epic form, David Lean followed his 1965 Doctor Zhivago with another stab at sweeping tragic romance, loosely adapted by frequent Lean screenwriter Robert Bolt from Madame Bovary. In an Oscar-nominated performance, Sarah Miles (the then Mrs. Bolt) stars as a young lass in a coastal Irish town circa WWI, trapped in a loveless marriage (to schoolteacher Robert Mitchum, who reportedly grew his own marijuana on the set) and drawn into an affair with a shellshocked Major (Christopher Jones) from the occupying British army. Ravishingly photographed by the great Freddie Young (who won an Oscar for his work), Ryan’s Daughter proved a popular hit but a critical failure, and Lean wouldn’t direct again until A Passage to India 14 years later. Print courtesy of Swedish Film Archive. In English with Swedish subtitles.

“It's insanely overproduced in Lean's standard epic style, yet somehow the crazy mismatches in scale contribute to the film's sense of romantic delirium.”
—Dave Kehr, <em>Chicago Reader