Review that ruined Lean

The review you are referring to sounds like the Pauline Kael review. I am relying on my memory, but I believe it is in the November 21, 1970 issue of the New Yorker. I have read so many times that her review caused him so much pain that he did not make another film for 14 years. Also there was a meeting at the Algonquin Hotel in which he was pretty much ambushed by a bunch of critics of which she was one. However if you read Kevin Brownlow's biography, he discusses Lean's plans during that 14 year period to make Mutiny on the Bounty which never came to fruition. So, I think people make too much of her review. It might have made him unhappy, but I can't believe that a mere mortal like Pauline Kael could deter such a genius as David Lean. It just does not make sense to me. He was driven to make films, and make films he did. I don't think anyone could have stood in his way. As for Ryan's Daughter, I love this film and I wish I could see it again on the big screen.

I would like to supplement my earlier reply by saying that I finally got around to going by the library this afternoon and looking up the Kael review in the New Yorker. Ouch! It is one of the most vitriolic review I have ever read of anything. It is not just that she did not like the film and said so, rather she sticks the knife in and twists it. In fact I get the distinct impression that she actually had some personal issues with both Lean and Bolt and took the opportunity to skewer them both. Instead of an impersonal discussion about what was good or bad about this film, she launches into an angry diatribe that seems to stem from a genuine anger at David Lean for daring to even make it. It is so vindictive that it loses its credibility for me as a film review, and leaves me asking the question, "Why does she seem to hate him so?" I can understand why her attacks would disturb David Lean, but at the same time, it is almost self destructive to take them seriously.

I believe it was Beethoven's Third (Eroica) Symphony. Beethoven dedicated it to "An heroic man". It seemed kind of appropriate music for the two of them walking along the beach.

Lean DIDN'T abandon filmmaking for 5 years. Critics aside, Dr. Zhivago was a pot of gold for MGM, and Lean spent the years after Zhivago making Ryan's Daughter. It took years to plan, build the sets, and film this (over)long movie.
Also, there ARE several collections of Pauline Kael's reviews. The one for Ryan's Daughter appears in DEEPER INTO MOVIES. Kael was not the only critic who found fault with Ryan's Daughter.


Here are a few excerpts from her review which echo similiar sentiments from critics and audiences alike.

"Ryan's Daughter is an expensive movie, but it's a cheap romance"
"Everything in Ryan's Daughter is familiar, but it was previously on a smaller scale."
"The camera swoops in on people from a heroic distance, but the characers are small..."
"...gush made respectable by millions of dollars TASTEFULLY wasted."
"In this movie everybody is trying to be something he isn't..."
"Everyone is cast against his natural appearance and apptitudes, so one is always aware of the acting."
"Christopher Jones has been drained of all vitality and remade into a synthesis of exhausted romantic cliches"
"The big sequences are just unrelated set pieces that don't function in the story."


AND here's John Simon:
"...who needs the puny people and trite plot...to clutter up the Panavision."

"The villagers are shadowy, the minor characters dimensionless, and the pricipals seemed to be carved from used celluloid (B-movie variety)."

"...the film ends, leaving me as unconcerned with its outcome as with its 189 minutes of preceeding hokum."

As many of you have viewed on the new DVD, Richard Schickel of Time Magazine, talks about the meeting between the NY Film Critics and Mr. Lean. It was pretty brutal apparently and then Schickel goes on to renig some of what he said. Actually just one word. Sorta. It's all very unfair in my mind, then and now. Schickel leans toward he-man movies. He goes ape sh!t over Eastwood, Peckinpah, and Sam Fuller, etc. At least he showed up on the DVD to explain himself. I'll give him that even though I didn't like what he said.

I assume the other NY critics are dead or near dead but it doesn't matter because the film speaks for itself. They were wrong.

They changed their tune.
I posted the NY Times DVD review here:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066319/board/nest/35650621

The National Society of Film Critics, of which Pauline Kael and Richard Schickel were members , invited Lean to what was to be an informal discussion – Schickel is believed to have said – “can you please explain how the man who directed Brief Encounter can have directed this load of *beep* you call Ryan’s Daughter?”..then the rest of the group laid into Lean. Lean commented to Kael that she wouldn’t be “content until you’ve reduced me to making a film in black and white on 16mm.”
Kael responded: “we’ll give you color.”
Extreme bunch of pompous a-holes.




"Wars are not won by killing children"- General Ramírez (Vera Cruz)

Pauline Kael's review is printed at least in part in Brownlow's Lean bio, and it is rather nasty. Basically it says Lean is a technician who cares more about his films looking pretty than having substance - a point which has been and can be argued about his films, but with which I take great umbrage.

And, as someone else has probably said, Lean didn't "abandon" filmmaking after "Zhivago"; it took him that time to recuperate, plan, and shoot this one. Even after "Ryan's Daughter", Lean tried to get several projects off the ground in the '70s (namely "The Bounty"), they just didn't come to fruition.

"My dear Norfolk, this isn't Spain - this is England!"

So many nested comments that I'm replying to the original ...

I just read the first couple of pages of PK's review; that much did not leave me wanting to read more. I found it supercilious and unfocused. Here's a few samples.

probably he doesn't have anything he really wants to do in movies except to command the technology. He probably enjoys working in his gentleman-technician's tasteful-colossal style.

That's in the very first paragraph. Already she is claiming to know Lean's motivations, and seems to be in love with the big words she uses. She's reviewing her perception of the director's motives rather than the movie. (Some have said that at least she's a brilliant writer. To me this is not brilliant writing. The New Yorker's current film critics, primarily Anthony Lane and David Denby, are much better.)

The sex-starved colleen falls for the shell-shocked hero

Did PK really think sex was what Rosy was starved for? It was obvious to me that she was starved for the excitement of new ideas.

Of Sarah Miles: This girl simply does not move the heavens

Well, she moved me. She and the scenery and cinematography were probably the best things about the film. Maybe that's because I'm male, but I don't think that's all -- Rosy's desire for ideas came through. (It may be apparent that I didn't exactly love the film. Some of my reasons are even mentioned in the PK review. But most of what she wrote, I find beside the point or just wrong.)

Her orgasms are recorded in glinting star-shaped patterns

I had almost forgotten that there even was a sex scene. It just wasn't important in the movie. It was the adventure in the forest that drew, and drove, Rosy's desire. PK could not see this? How sad for her.

the picture puts Lady Chatterley's lover back into the pseudo-aristocratic pulp romanticism from which D. H. Lawrence wrested him.

I can barely follow that sentence. Not even sure if I did. I think that basically she's saying that the sentiments are expressed too directly and openly, but I'm not sure. To me this is academic writing enamored with its own barbs.

looks as if he'd been rushed and hadn't had time to complete the editing ... (A constable is murdered in the beginning and his body is hidden, but apparently he isn't missed, because he isn't mentioned again.)

I have to wonder how carefully PK watched the film! In the first place, it isn't clear where this event takes place. The constable probably was missed, but in another town. The point of the scene is to show Tim O'Leary, to show his character, early on, even though he doesn't appear again until much later. It's called foreshadowing, PK. A barb like that makes me wonder just how carefully she watched any movie. Maybe she knows what's wrong with them, but does she know what's right with them? Does she understand that drama and reality are very different?

Well, that's enough, I don't want to read the rest. Though skimming it, it appears she never even mentions my biggest dislike, which is the musical score, shimmering bad romantic music which does not evoke Ireland in any shape or form. I'm certainly no great fan of the film, but much more so than of PK.

BTW, someone mentioned eight pages. It's spread out over nine pages, but that includes ads. It's actually only six columns -- two full pages.

Edward