In this golden age of home viewing, the Criterion Collection still provides some of the best editions of the best movies ever released, usually with a rich selection of extras and often including audio commentaries (a feature they pioneered, and perhaps the greatest gift ever to film students and cinephiles alike). This column features one Criterion release per week, based entirely on where my interests lead me.
Rumer Godden, OBE, was quite the popular writer in her day, but today she’s best remembered for the films based on her work, some of which are grounder in her experiences growing up Anglo in what was then British India. One such film is Jean Renoir’s The River, based on her 1946 (one year before India became an independent country) novel of the same name.
The River is set in India but the focus is squarely on the Anglo community, in particular a British family (5 kids, 2 parents) who live in a compound near the banks of the Ganges. They have quite a bit of interaction with the Indian community: one of the younger kids has an Indian best friend, like other Anglos the family has Indian servants including “Nan” (Suprova Mukerjee), the children’s nanny, and India is all around them, but the two worlds are like a Venn diagram, existing in shared space with some overlap but also a lot that is separate.
A documentary-like introduction featuring voiceover by the family’s eldest daughter Harriet as an adult (read by June Hillman) sets the context and introduces the main characters; the voiceover returns from time to time throughout the film. The main conflict beings with the arrival of an eligible young man, Captain John (Thomas E. Breen, a U.S. Marine and coincidentally the son of film censor Joseph Breen), who has had a leg amputated due to battle injuries. Two young women are interested in him: the very white and rather snotty Valerie (Adrienne Corri) and the bi-racial and much more dignified Melanie (Radha Burnier), product of a British father (Arther Shields) and an Indian mother (deceased before the film begins). I know who I’d pick, that’s for sure.
Harriet (Patricia Walters, a non-professional in her only film role)), eldest daughter of the focus family, is also infatuated with Captain John but realizes she’s still nowhere near mature enough to be a serious rival for his affections. Still, she’s a sharp observer, a serious thinker, and a budding writer who shares some of her poetry and stories with him, suggesting she’s a stand-in for Rumer Godden. Other things happen that I won’t spoil here, but it all ends with a reflection on the cycles of life, way before The Lion King wore out that phrase. My teenage self loved the exoticness of it all, as well as the fairly simple story and clearly defined moral. Today, I have more issues based on centering the lives of colonizers while treating the native population as backdrop, but there’s enough that’s good in this film to make it worth watching.
The Technicolor cinematography by Claude Renoir (son of actor Pierre, nephew of director Jean, grandson of painter Pierre-August) is a big part of what makes this film work (and it looks great in this restoration by the Academy Film Archive). The visuals of this film are the #1 thing that captured me when I first saw it, long before I knew anything about imperialism or colonialism, and visually it remains delightful even though my knowledge of such things has somewhat tempered my pleasure in it. Plus, it was entirely shot in India, so you get a little armchair travel along with your story. Claude Renoir has 88 credits as a cinematographer in the imdb, from 1935’s Toni (also directed by Jean Renoir) to Franklin j. Schaffner’s Sphinx (1981), and including such varied fare as Lights of Paris (1938), Madame Butterfly (1954), Paris When It Sizzles (1964), Barbarella (1968), and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). | Sarah Boslaugh
Spine #: 276
Technical details: 99 min.; color; screen ratio 1.33:1; English.
Edition reviewed: DVD
Extras: video introduction to the film by Jean Renoir; video interview with Martin Scorsese; audio interview with producer Ken McEldowney; 1995 BBC documentary “Rumer Godden: An Indian Affair”; stills gallery; trailer; booklet with an essay by Ian Christie and notes by Jean Renoir. [note: the extras on the disc I reviewed don’t exactly correspond with what’s listed on the Criterion web site]
Fun Fact(s): In the interview included on this disc, Martin Scorsese says that it, along with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes (1948), are the most beautiful color movies ever made. Wes Anderson was introduced to the film by Scorsese and it was part of his inspiration to make a film set in India, The Darjeeling Limited (2007).
Parting Thought: The River is a beautiful film that has influenced several major American directors, yet it’s also a film very much trapped in its time—by the thin characterization of several important female characters as well as the colonial attitudes it takes for granted. So how to fairly deal with a film from another time and place that has aged well in some ways and not so much in others?
