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Reasonably tight race this week between The Servant and Ryan's Daughter, both very recent requests (two and five weeks, respectively) making it to heads-up for the first time. I confess that I was rooting for Losey's film, which I loved when I watched it over 20 years ago (and which isn't 3½ hours long), but Spawn of Ryan prevailed with 52% of the vote. This film is supposed to be bad, yes? Or at least underwhelming? Feel like it's long been a white elephant example, but sometimes I discover decades later that a Clifford cult has formed without any awareness on my part, so who knows. Rentable via the usual suspects.

Comments

Anonymous

I wouldn't say "bad", no - "not Lean's best work", sure, but there's a lot of good stuff in there. I hadn't noticed before voting that seven of your ten Lean ratings hover right around 60---if you're generally not that big on him, this might not be your thing. But it's not the worst thing we've made you watch this year.

Anonymous

This bit from a James Wolcott piece that we read in a college film crit class has never left me: "David Lean, the lordly director of Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge on the River Kwai, was so demoralized after being verbally smacked around during a meeting with members of the National Society of Film Critics in a private room at the Algonquin Hotel in 1970 (the critics wanted to know, as the meeting’s chairman, Time’s Richard Schickel, expressed it, “how someone who made Brief Encounter could make a piece of bullshit like Ryan’s Daughter”) that he retreated like a wounded animal, and didn’t make another film for 14 years."

Anonymous

Wait. NSFC used to meet with major directors at the Algonquin? This sounds shady as fuck, but also kinda cool.

Anonymous

Yeah, remember this was the same era where Warren Beatty got Pauline Kael to come work at Paramount.