Rugged scenery and wild Atlantic made Kerry choice for love story backdrop

TWICE Oscar-winning director David Lean, whose films also include Doctor Zhivago and A Passage To India, chose the Dingle Peninsula as the location for Ryan’s Daughter because of its rugged scenery and the Atlantic backdrop.

Lean’s epic tale of forbidden love, set during the 1916 Rebellion, tells the story of Charles Shaughnessy, played by Robert Mitchum, who falls in love with and marries the much younger Rosy (Sarah Miles).

However, Rosy soon becomes involved in an affair with a young British officer who arrives in the area and she is soon suspected of passing on information about rebels to the British authorities.

A village known as Kirrary was built specially for the film on a wind-swept hillside overlooking the sea near Dunquin. The village was constructed by 200 workmen using slate and 20,000 tonnes of stone from local quarries and was solidly constructed to stand up to winter gales blowing in from the Atlantic. The village was demolished soon after and the only visible reminder of the film on the local landscape today is the ruin of a schoolhouse.

The first day’s shooting was on February 24, 1969, and work continued for 162 days. The film was released in 1970 and is still being shown regularly on television. It is also available on DVD. Two Ryan’s Daughter exhibitions are currently under way, one in the Diseart, in An Daingean, and the other at Teach Slea Head. Up to 40 parasols of the type used by Sarah Miles in the stand-out beach scene were available locally at one time. Some are still around, including one on display at the Diseart.

Ryan’s Daughter has become a cult film and, while the Dingle Peninsula continues to gain handsomely from it, the only pity is that Ryan didn’t have another daughter, according to local wags.