#276: RENOIR, Jean: The River (1951)

RENOIR, Jean (France)
The River [1951]

Spine #276
DVD

Director Jean Renoir's entrancing first color feature — shot entirely on location in India — is a visual tour de force. Based on the novel by Rumer Godden, the film eloquently contrasts the growing pains of three young women with the immutability of the holy Bengal River, around which their daily lives unfold. Enriched by Renoir's subtle understanding and appreciation for India and its people, The River gracefully explores the fragile connections between transitory emotions and everlasting creation.

99 minutes
Color

Monaural

1:33:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2005

Director/Writers

Adapted from the novel by Rumer Godden.

Screenplay by Godden and Jean Renoir.

Renoir was 57 when he directed The River.

Other Renoir films in the Collection:

#818: La Chienne (1931)
#305: Boudu Saved From Drowning (1932)
#1040: Toni (1935)

#239: The Lower Depths (1936)
#746: A Day In The Country (1936)
#1: Grand Illusion (1937)
#324: La Bête Humaine (1938)
#216: The Rules Of The Game (1939)
#242: The Golden Coach (1953)
#243: French Cancan (1955)
#244: Elena And Her Men (1956)

The Film

Renoir’s first color film, the first color film shot in India — in Technicolor.

Nora Swinburne (Mother) and Esmond Knight (Father) have a lot of children — all girls, save one young boy, who has a fascination with turtles and snakes. Father manages a jute mill owned by the rich Mr. John (Arthur Shields), who has two children: Valerie (Adrienne Corri), a striking redhead on the verge of womanhood, and Melanie (Radha), the offspring of his marriage to a Bengali woman (who, it seems, is deceased).

Father’s oldest girl is Harriet (Patricia Walters) — an aspiring writer/poet, who we is portrayed as an adult by the narrator (June Hillman).

A stranger comes into their lives — Mr. John’s cousin from America, Captain John (Thomas E. Breen [son of the infamous Joseph Breen]. The Captain lost a leg in the war (as did Breen IRL!), and he awakens the latent sexuality of all the older girls: Harriet, Valerie and — from an appropriate distance — the mixed-race Melanie.

**

Faithful to the Godden novel, Renoir’s film unfolds as a series of tableaux scenes — with careful attention to all the (then) exotic locales, especially the river.

It would be easy to smell a whiff of colonialism in this story of a white Christian family living amidst the millennial traditions of the Bengali people — but the family is transfixed by the Hindu people and their festivals and routines.

Made just a few years after India became independent, the respect and exuberance for the Hindu rituals and festivals shown by every member of the families tends to negate any hint of contemptuous behavior on their part.

By far, the most exciting scene is conjured up by Harriet’s imagination, fired up by the supreme Hindu god, Krishna. She has to be told how to spell it, but her story imagines Krishna’s consort Radha dancing for him, as the two turn into ordinary Indians.

Her dance is not to be missed (0:53:40).

Renoir met a young writer on the set, who became his assistant director. His name was Satyajit Ray!

Film Rating (0-60):

56

The Extras

The Booklet

Sixteen-page booklet featuring essays by Ian Christie and Alexander Sesonske.

Christie:

“The role of the ‘Eurasian’ Melanie — played by the Indian dancer Radha— is a much more daring element than might be apparent today. The very suggestion of romance between Melanie and the white American, ‘Captain John,’ challenges racial taboos on both sides of the Atlantic; and the character, who is not in the book, was devised precisely to give an Indian other than a servant an authentic voice and presence in the film’s central drama.”

Sesonske:

“The narrator’s voice places the action in the past, filtered through memory, allowing a reflective complexity that merely showing the events could not achieve — reflecting not merely on adolescence but on India and the Indian attitude of consent to the world that captivated Renoir and that gives the film a cyclical, timeless air. This introspective voice permits the interweaving of the life of Harriet and the life of India, so that the sights and sounds of India may dominate our experience of the film while Harriet remains its conscious center. It becomes, thus, a device that allows Renoir to remain true to the spirit of Rumer Godden’s novel while giving himself to his new love, India.”

Commentary

None.

Introduction

To the film by Renoir.

Always a pleasure. Having discovered the novel in a New Yorker review, he was immediately enthralled, but making the rounds of Hollywood producers, he was told that “without tigers, Bengal lancers and elephants,” it couldn’t be done.

So much for Hollywood producers.

Rumer Godden: An Indian Affair

A 1995 BBC documentary that follows the author as she journeys back to her childhood home in India.

An elderly Godden returns to India with her adult daughter and narrates the story of her life, as she visits the people and locations where it all happened.

Godden doesn’t gloss over all the painful parts of her past, yet her love of her adopted country is evident throughout.

Video interview

With Martin Scorsese, a key figure in the restoration.

Seeing the film as a nine-year-old, and never forgetting it!

Audio interview

From 2000 with producer Ken McEldowney.

A Hollywood florist, with no experience in the film industry, he mortgaged everything to produce the film, which was beset by seemingly insurmountable difficulties.

A long interview, but McEldowney is one helluva storyteller!

Stills gallery

Featuring production photos and publicity stills.

Original theatrical trailer

You can hear the desperation of the narrator trying to sell a film about India with no tigers, lancers, or elephants!

Extras Rating (0-40):

36

56 + 36 =

92

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