Whirlpool of Fate

To try to find some of the seeds which produced Renoir's masterpieces of the thirties is splitting hairs.All we can say is that it shows Renoir's taste for nature ,rivers,country landscapes.

The heroine called Gudule (the name has become completely ludicrous in today's France ;no one is called Gudule anymore)is played by Renoir's favorite actress of the silent era ,Catherine Hessling.Her fate is worthy of Hugo's "les miserables" :mistreated by a wicked lecherous uncle ,taken in by a poacher and his mum, left in the cold and the rain...And finally she finds love :a nice young man falls for her and marries her.His background is very bourgeois ,but the parents do not seem to bother.That is to say we are far from "Boudu Sauvé des Eaux" ,"La Chienne" and even "Une Partie de Campagne" .

Best moment: the heroine's nightmare;people who know well Renoir's silent era will notice the similarities between this sequence and that of "La Petite Fille aux Allumettes" where the little match girl and her attentive escort go for a horse ride in the sky.The comparison stops here for " La Fille de l'Eau' is inferior to the Andersen adaptation.

Actually the main influence is DW Griffith but then again Hessling is not

Lilian Gish.

For Renoir's fans.The others might find it a bit obsolete.

This film is from the DVD collection from Criterion and it's the earliest of the films by director Jean Renoir in the package. Naturally, being made in 1925 it's a silent film--and it's really one of the better ones from the era. Now this is not because the story has a huge budget or complex plot. No, it's very simple and direct. But, it also is masterfully composed--with some wonderful film work and lots of skill in such a young director.

The story begins with a young lady (Catherine Hessling) living on a barge with her father and uncle. When the father unexpectedly dies, her life falls to pieces as the uncle is scum--complete and total scum. She flees for her life and to avoid being raped and lands in the lap of a 'bohemian' (in this case, really just a thief who shuns work) and you know she can do better. However, when the bohemian and his mother take off, Hessling is all alone and without any resources. What will become of her? Tune in and see for yourself.

The film works well for some reasons other than just the fine direction and cinematography. Hessling's amazing eyes really catch your attention. They practically glow and really give her a gorgeous expression. Also, all the nice location shooting in the countryside was terrific--like a window into a lost way of life. Well worth seeing and well-constructed.

A complex and sympathetic narrative about a young woman that begins with her working on a river barge with her father and her uncle and follows her through difficult circumstances after her father dies, exploited but resourceful, even using petty crime, particularly in the company of a scampish boy. There's something Pickfordesque about Catherine Hessling (who became Mme. Renoir), and a touch of D. W. Griffith in her occasional hanky-winding, but Renoir is not as sentimental. There's a dream sequence as good as Hitchcock decades later, night scenes (a haystack on fire), and observations about the ways of the well-born that are a start on the way to La Règle du jeu.

Jean Renoir's first film, WHIRLPOOL OF FATE, was made when he was 30 years old and starred his first wife Catherine Hessling (who had modeled for his father Pierre-Auguste Renoir). Essentially a melodrama in the style of D. W. Griffith, it concerns the plight of a young woman who works on a canal barge with her father and uncle. After the father dies in a work related accident, she escapes from her drunken, lecherous uncle and winds up with a group of gypsies who take care of her. She meets a young thief there and after many trials and tribulations, she marries the son of a middle class family and it all works out.

Although the story is clearly indebted to Griffith, the visuals are Renoir's own. WHIRLPOOL contains scenes that would be recast in later movies such as F. W. Murnau's SUNRISE (1927) and Jean Vigo's L'ATALANTE (1934). The highlight is a dream sequence which is worthy of Hitchcock. Hessling, wearing stark monochromatic make-up, gives a respectable silent film performance as the hapless orphan who goes from one mishap to another. The male performers acquit themselves well in what are essentially one-dimensional characters who are strictly plot motivated.

This new Kino Lorber Blu-Ray is a nice upgrade from the old 2007 Lionsgate DVD release. The picture has undergone a 4K restoration effort which helps to clear up some of the contrast issues especially in the night scenes and gives a sharper image throughout. The original concertina score by Marc Perrone has been replaced with one by Antonio Coppola. It is more user friendly in that it offers more variety but I prefer the original which enhances the bleakness of the story. The Blu-Ray comes with an audio commentary by critic Nick Pinkerton that provides background on Renoir and the film...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.

Admittedly made merely to exploit his wife Catherine Hessling's "photogenic" attributes, Jean Renoir's solo directorial debut already displays his trademark humanism and painterly eye – while Hessling herself turns in a far more naturalistic performance here than she did in NANA (1926).

The plot is simple and melodramatic: Hessling loses her father, is abused by her brutish uncle (possibly inspired by Griffith's BROKEN BLOSSOMS [1919]), falls in with crooked gypsies (who ultimately incur the wrath of the people and have their caravan burned to the ground), is taken in by a wealthy family but is caught stealing for her uncle's sake…until the latter gets his come-uppance and the girl is engaged to her employer's young son. The accompanying organ score is effectively evocative to begin with but, eventually, it takes a tediously avant-gardist turn.

The film's barge opening anticipates Jean Vigo's L'ATALANTE (1934) and the search at sea, F.W. Murnau's SUNRISE (1927); there is also some remarkably fast cutting throughout, a style which Renoir would largely forsake in his subsequent work. The highlight of WHIRPLOOL OF FATE, however, is undoubtedly an amazing dream sequence which, uncharacteristically for the director, is heavily reliant on optical effects and camera technique; incidentally, the two shorts I followed it with on Lionsgate 3-Disc "Jean Renoir's Collector's Edition" proved similarly experimental.