The River

Jean Renoir embraces Technicolor for the first time in his adaptation of Rumer Godden's coming- of-age novel THE RIVER, with the latter collaborating on the screenplay. The story takes place in Bengal, India, a teenage girl named Harriet (Walters) is the eldest child of a middle-class British family living near the riverbank of Ganges, her father (an one-eyed Knight) runs a jute mill, and her mother (Swinburne) is expecting a child no. 7.

It is a carefree scenario, growing up in the natural inculcation of an exotically profound Hindu culture while carrying on an genteel upbringing, sometimes, it conspires to be a false or at least parochial impression of the land and its people, which doesn't take up too much space in the story-line, the only native Indian who has a speaking part is Nan (Mukerjee), the family's convivial but gossipy nanny, and the rest sustains as an ethnic curiosity to meet the Westerners' eyes, although beguilingly and entrancingly so, after all, what we are allowed to watch is the smugly colonial tip of the Indian iceberg.

The plot revolves around Harriet's budding affection towards the guest of their neighbor Mr. John (Shields), an one-legged American Captain John (Breen), who takes his time in lolling on a foreign land, to find some peace with his battlefield past and physical disability, look for a new resolution for life. As John is the only eligible white young man on the market, to her chagrin, a besotted, but fairly plain-looking Harriet has a losing game against her rival, the maturer and more zaftig Valerie (Corri), by the way, a British girl too is also her best friend. And throughout this picturesque film, it is Harriet's voice-over that guides viewers traversing her prepubescent triviality (poems, indeed), to listen to her inner voice, to sympathize her unrequited love, to find empathy in this garden-variety tale.

Wielded as an emotional clincher, a tragic incident materializes as one downside of having a brood of many caused by adult negligence, but here also emanates a disquieting undertow to pinpoint the virulence of a foreign society with a local boy standing by as an unwary abetter. And a cheesy solution to get it over is taking the pro-procreation flag, babies are being borne all the time.

The cast is mixed with adult professionals and amateur players, but comes off barely adequate, a major gripe is the narrative ellipsis in the story of Melanie (Radha), the mixed-race daughter of Mr. John, who stands out (there is not much competition though) with a massively pleasurable Ganesha-courting dancing sequence, but whose dislike of herself, waffling identity never been considerably mapped out as a pre-eminent counterpoint of Harriet's more orthodox background.

So, all above sounds like a pejorative critique against a film who has earned a hallowed reputation since its genesis, yet, it is as plain as the nose on one's face, the picture's eye-catching glamour and aural accompaniments are undeniably supreme, technologically speaking. And it is smart enough for Mr. Renoir to treat it as a philosophical prose other than a heady narration of banal proceedings, only a 60-odd-year later, its allure fades away slightly due to the original novel's awkward stance on a colonized land and Renoir's condoning deference.

India has, through the years, fascinated many a major film-maker, including Robert Flaherty, Fritz Lang, Louis Malle, Michael Powell, Roberto Rossellini and Jean Renoir. Renoir's film, based on a novel by English novelist Rumer Godden of BLACK NARCISSUS (1947) fame, is as gorgeously shot (in ravishing Technicolor) as can be expected from a master film-maker and the son of a famous French impressionist painter; however, the narrative itself is rather disappointingly thin to support its 99-minute running time. Having said that, the coming-of-age story of two English girls living in India and loving the same young officer wounded in WWII, is appealingly performed by Nora Swinburne, Esmond Knight, Arthur Shields and Adrienne Corri. The central character, played winningly by newcomer Patricia Walters (whose only film this turned out to be) is a stand-in for Godden herself, whose considerable writing talent was not encouraged by her stern family. The film offers Renoir another chance to show his humanist side dwelling as it does on the strange (to Western eyes) social and religious customs of the Indian people; even so, when all is said and done, there is just too much local color in the film. However, as Renoir is not only one of my favorite film directors but arguably the greatest of all French film-makers, I am confident that a second viewing of THE RIVER will elevate significantly my estimation of it, as it is probably too rich an experience to savor all at one go.

Among the copious supplements on the Criterion DVD, there is a typically enthusiastic interview with Martin Scorsese (who also helped in funding the film's restoration) who waxes lyrically on the effect the film had on him as a 9 year-old film-goer; surprisingly for me, he also confesses that the appeal of Renoir's masterpiece, LA REGLE DU JEU (1939), an automatic candidate for the title of the greatest film of all time, escapes him!!

There is something special about this movie. In fact, to say there is something special does not tell much, and it could be equally applied to hundreds of films which are much less special than this. So let's start again. I had never seen a film like "The River" before. Thanks to the Spanish TV program "Qué grande es el cine" I discovered this piece of Art created by a major artist: Renoir. Some of my other favourite movies are similar in some aspects to others. And so, "North by Northwest" resembles other thrillers with Cary Grant; "A Touch of Evil" is a moral fable and also a nightmare which reminds a bit of "The Night of the Hunter", and so on. But "The River" reminds me of nothing I have seen on a screen. It has to do with ethics and with life. It has to do with balance, with understanding human nature. I think this film has everything which can be told in a film. Absolutely everything. I believe this film reflects an attitude towards life and towards art. So I got it finally! This film is if anything an attitude. Once you have seen, you feel better, you know more about life, your perspective has changed. It is a ray of light. I should be compulsory in High School and everywhere.

It's difficult to argue with Gabridl's remarks about the film - and I'm sure Renoir would have pleaded guilty as charged. Of not making a civics lesson. So, if that's what you want out of art, then this is not the film for you. At all. You will learn nothing of Indian politics, the "exoticism" will drive you mad, and you'd do better to go back and re-read Said's "Orientalism," as Gabridl suggests.

Renoir went to India, and made a film from the perspective of an entranced outsider looking in, creating his own, personalized world - not India, but Renoir's world, where everything is transitory, including beauty and death, and where every sight and sound becomes that much more precious.

I am glad that we have come so far since I've been a kid, when so many ideas and prejudices carried over from the colonial era were still floating through the air, and it's true that no one except that most naive among us would make a film like THE RIVER today. But Renoir was alive in 1950, not now, and he made his film for his time, and that time attaches itself to the film, just like it does to every artwork. I doubt that even Gabridl would suggest that it was the work of a craven exploiter of the masses, and that its "faults" are not the faults of a corrupt man, but of a generous and compassionate one. It's one of the most generous films I know of.

Finally, I would add that while this is a film made by a westerner for other westerners, it was certainly inspirational to Satyajit Ray, who worked as Renoir's assistant.

A really glorious, spellbinding movie. Filmed in Bengal, India, on the Ganges, it captures the essence of India, the timeless quality of life on the Ganges, without being patronizing.

This is a coming of age movie about three teenage girls, two British and one Anglo-Indian, and how their lives are affected by the arrival of a one-legged American war veteran. It's very easy to fall into sentimentality in a movie like this, but Renoir avoids this obvious pitfall. Though I have to say, I found this film very moving.

It helps that this movie is filmed in Technicolor, and is one of the best uses of Technicolor of that era.

Some of the performers were amateurs, including the actor who played the veteran and some of the children, but overall the performances are outstanding. A fine, low-key performance by Esmond Knight. This was the only film for Patricia Walters, who played Harriet, and Thomas Breen, the war veteran who played Captain Jack, never made any other movies. Watch for Arthur Shields, the brilliant Irish actor, as father of Nan.