[7][8] The film, set between August 1917 and January 1918, tells the story of a married Irish woman who has an affair with a British officer during World War I, despite moral and political opposition from her nationalist neighbours.

The supporting cast features John Mills, Christopher Jones, Trevor Howard and Leo McKern.

Tom Ryan publicly supports the recently suppressed Easter Rising, but secretly serves the British as an informer.

Local halfwit Michael notices the footprints as well and searches the cave, finding Major Doryan's Victoria Cross.

One night in January 1918, during a fierce storm, IRB leader Tim O'Leary and a small band of his men arrive in Ryan's pub seeking help to recover a shipment of German arms being floated from a ship towards the beach.

The entire village turns out to help the rebels, with Ryan the most outwardly devoted to the task, wading into the breakers repeatedly to salvage boxes of weapons and explosives.

The villagers, led by Mr. McCardle, storm into the schoolhouse and seize Rosy, convinced that she informed the British of the arms shipment.

Thomas watches in shame and horror as the mob humiliated her by stripping her clothes off and Mrs. McCardle shearing her hair until Father Collins intervenes.

The next day, Rosy and Charles leave for Dublin, which Father Collins and Michael help carry their luggage to the bus stop.

While he admired the script, he was undergoing a personal crisis at the time and when pressed by Lean as to why he would not be available for filming, told him: "I was actually planning on committing suicide."

Upon hearing of this, scriptwriter Bolt told him, "Well, if you just finish working on this wretched little film and then do yourself in, I'd be happy to stand the expenses of your burial.

Lean was not alone in his disappointment with the actor; Jones's retirement from acting was purportedly due to the bad reviews he received for Ryan's Daughter.

At the appeal hearing, MGM executives explained that they needed the less restrictive rating to allow more audience into the theatres; otherwise the company would not be able to survive financially.

Roger Ebert gave it two stars out of four and wrote that "Lean's characters, well written and well acted, are finally dwarfed by his excessive scale.

"[24] Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the screenplay "the kind of book-club fiction that should be read under a hair-dryer, a fact that cannot be disguised by the elaborate production (Mr.

"[25] Arthur D. Murphy of Variety called the film a "brilliant enigma, brilliant, because David Lean achieved to a marked degree the daring and obvious goal of intimate romantic tragedy along the rugged geographical and political landscape of 1916 Ireland; an enigma, because overlength of perhaps 30 minutes serves to magnify some weaknesses of Robert Bolt's original screenplay, to dissipate the impact of the performances, and to overwhelm outstanding photography and production.

"[26] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film one-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, "Poor casting, heavy-handed direction that becomes comical during the big love scene and empty-headed characters make David Lean's 'Ryan's Daughter' an epic disappointment.

"[27] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "The original love story which Robert Bolt has set in these desolate seascapes seems both too frail and too banal to sustain the crushing weight of 3 hours and 18 minutes of Super Panavision.

"[30] Some attribute the negative reviews to critics' expectations being too high, following the three epics Lean had directed in a row before Ryan's Daughter.

[citation needed] (Others dispute this, citing the fact that Lean tried but was unable to get several projects off the ground, including The Bounty.)

Since the film's release on DVD, Ryan's Daughter has retained its reputation as one of Lean's weakest films, critics finding it "overlong" (Variety), "a weary Madame Bovary rehash" (The Times) and "a lush and overblown self-indulgence in which David Lean has given us a great deal less than meets the eye" (Roger Ebert).