The River (1951)
Directed by Jean Renoir

Film Review

The River, Jean Renoir's first colour film, stands out from what is, by any standards, an extraordinary body of work, on account of its beguiling poetic sense, sympathetic portrayal of another culture and sheer cinematographic flair.  It is the most atypical of Renoir's films - its maturity, style and texture is more evocative of the great Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray than of the French experimentalist cineaste Jean Renoir.  The exotic location, Rumer Godden's beautifully lyrical screenplay and Claude Renoir's stunning camerawork imbue the film with more poetry, a deeper understanding of humanity, and a far greater spiritual dimension than we find in many of the director's other films.  Some consider this to be Jean Renoir's greatest film, and it certainly rivals the genius of his early masterpieces such as La Grande illusion (1937).

The idea for the film came when Jean Renoir was living in Los Angeles, after he had already made around half a dozen films (many popular successes) for Hollywood.  He came across a novel by the English writer Rumer Godden, who is now best known for her book “Black Narcissus”.   Coincidentally it was at this time that Renoir met Kenneth McEldowney, who had made his fortune as a florist and real estate agent.  McEldowney was determined to make a film, prompted by his wife, a publicist for MGM.  The story goes that McEldowney swore he could make a better film than his wife's company.

McEldowney's ambition was to produce a film about India, where he spent his military service, and to that end he succeeded in getting financial support from a consortium of wealthy Indian maharajas.    Jean Renoir had already spent many futile months trying to persuade American film producers to back his production of The River before he fell into the lap of Kenneth McEldowney.  It was a happy conjunction that resulted in a film that was both a critical and a commercial success, allowing Renoir to renew his filmmaking career in Europe after his self-imposed American exile during the war.  The River made more than 16 million dollars and was awarded the first International Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1951.  McEldowney evidently wasn't greatly affected by what he had achieved; he went straight back in to real estate, happy to have made his point.

For any film producer, The River would have been a daunting project, but McEldowney's inexperience hardly shows.  Famously the first film to have been shot entirely in India in Technicolor, the scale of the undertaking is apparent in the end result - sumptuous location sequences quite unlike anything seen in cinema at the time.  Renoir skilfully weaves documentary-style travelogue passages (including an exquisite account of Diwali, the Hindu festival of Lights) around the central narrative, adding not just local colour to the story but conveying a surprising amount of detail about Indian life and culture.

Respectful references to Hindu and Buddhist beliefs are woven into the fabric of the film, with the natural wonder that is the River Ganges providing the central underpinning leitmotif.  The river represents life, a watercourse that flows for eternity, constantly renewing itself, just as human souls make their slow progression from ignoble dust towards the highest level of enlightenment - all part of the Divine's pattern of continuance and purification.  The world spins.  The day ends, the end begins.  Over and over.

The Buddhist notion of rebirth and renewal is central to the film, a film that is preoccupied for the most part with the trauma of one teenage girl's sexual awakening.   A combination of Renoir's rigorously unsentimental approach and a strikingly realistic performance from Patricia Walters (who plays Harriet, her one and only film credit) gives the story of a vulnerable young girl falling in love for the first time a tough realist edge that is both truthful and charged with pathos.

Harriet's innocence and idealism make an effective contrast with the worldly charms of her more confident elder sister Valerie, played by another alluring ingénue, Adrienne Corri.  With her flaming red hair, alabaster skin, and seductive eyes, Corri is the embodiment of a pre-Raphaelite nymph, particularly striking in the sequence where she taunts her lover in the lush forest.  Of the three young girls in the drama, the most knowing and perhaps the most tragic is the beautiful half-caste Melanie, played by Radha, who has the additional burden of belonging to two quite different cultures.  Three very different characters - each suffering the same pangs of first love and transition to womanhood, but in subtly different ways.

Stylistically, The River may be the film that is least recognisably the work of Jean Renoir.  Yet, for anyone familiar with the director's work it is the one film that best exemplifies his human qualities - his compassion for other cultures, his respect and tenderness towards women, and his love of humanity.  Visually alluring and insightful in so many ways, The River is a great work of cinema - a sublime piece of art that rewards both the intellect and the senses.  It is a film which helps to broaden our appreciation of the world, and which instils in the spectator a sense of wonder at the magnificence of Creation.

More crucially, The River is a film which prompts us to reflect on the values of the West and the East.  Whilst most of us in the West enjoy wealth and comfort, we knowingly live in a stagnant mire of tawdry materialism, leading empty, selfish lives that can only end in loss and oblivion.  "The River" of Jean Renoir's film offers an alternative way of living - a life that is not a mere disconnected bubble of Self that has no value, no significance, but rather one that is an integral part of an endless continuum of Being, one precious droplet in the river which carries with it the human spirit, flowing on and on, forever...

Film Synopsis

On the banks of a great river in India, an English family enjoys an idyllic existence.   Father is the owner of a jute mill which employs hundreds of local people.  Mother is content with bringing up her adorable children, the eldest being her teenage daughters Harriet and Valerie.  Their neighbour is Mr John, an Irishman who married an Indian woman and who has a daughter, Melanie.  One day, Mr John acquires an unexpected houseguest, his cousin Captain John, who is convalescing after sustaining an injury in the war which cost him one of his legs.  The three adolescent girls - Harriet, Valerie and Melanie - experience a strange fascination for the handsome ex-soldier.  For each, the arrival of the stranger marks a turning point in her life: the death of childhood and the birth of womanhood…