Jean Renoir’s The River (Transcript) Originally broadcast February 24, 2006
Milos Stehlik
Listen to Milos Stehlik's Commentary
Jean Renoir is a genius of world cinema, whose films are among the highest achievements of civilization. Why is he out of fashion?
It is a strange disconnect. Shakespeare, Eugene O’Neill, Mozart, Wagner, Rembrandt, or Monet don’t go out of fashion. Why should this astonishing man, a humanist of the highest order, whose films Grand Illusion and Rules of the Game tower over anything that a hundred thousand films have come up with, now be neglected, rarely thought of, written about? Our not watching, over and over, the films of Jean Renoir, is our loss.
This week, the Music Box Theatre shows Jean Renoir’s The River, a film neglected for many years even by those who love Renoir and his work.
The River is based on a novel by Rumer Godden, and takes place in India after the end of World War II, and before the declaration of an independent Indian state. Harriet, the young teenage daughter of a British family, is just learning about her sexuality. She has two friends—the slightly older and far more attractive Valerie, and Melanie, who is of mixed race, and lives with her widowed British father.
This closed-off world of British expatriates living on the banks of the Ganges is interrupted by the appearance of a stranger. He is Valerie’s cousin, an American veteran who comes to India after the end of the War, recuperating from his injuries. A chain smoker, he lost a leg in the war, and for the girls he is someone out of a fairy tale.
Each of the three teenage girls immediately falls in love with the American, but each has to confront a problem. Harriet is too young for the soldier to take her seriously as a potential lover. Melanie, who is part Indian, is out of the picture because of her part Indian heritage. Interracial romance in India of the late 40s was not accepted. And Valerie is more interested in competing with Harriet than in a serious love affair with the American captain.
Most of the cast in The River were non-professionals. The film was shot in Technicolor, by Jean Renoir’s nephew, the brilliant cinematographer Claude Renoir. It was Jean Renoir’s first color film.
Renoir consulted with Satyajit Ray, who was his assistant on The River, about including more Indian characters in the film. In the end, he chose to follow the novel closely. He was criticized for making a film in India in which almost all of the characters are white Westerners.
Jean, who was the second son of the famous Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, said that his father “taught us never to shut our eyes to anything, for he was open to any impression, all the time hoping to reach out to a kind of truth.”
The truth in The River was the landscape. There is the water, which Renoir always loved and which often is a key image in his films. Here, the timelessness of India is the flow of the Ganges.
There is a deep, spiritual quality to all of Renoir’s work. His writing—his autobiography, his definitive biography of his father, Renoir, My Father—reveal a man of deep humanity and a kind of sage-like wisdom. In The River, that wisdom is largely given to the kids. The three girls struggle with what in today’s age we would call “issues.” Harriet is the “ugly duckling,” the red-haired Valerie beautiful but self-centered with a know-it-all attitude, and the stunning Melanie, part of two cultures but not completely accepted by either.
Most of all, The River is a film which conveys a kind of rich intimacy few filmmakers can capture. As Valerie dances with the American soldier, Captain John, she first chants, “Yes,” and then cries after the first kiss and explains, “I’m crying because I didn’t want to be real.”
The River is a film about emergence, about first love, about the fragility and wisdom of youth. It is one of the most beautiful films ever made, saturated with the richness and the rhythm of the Indian subcontinent. It is a film about romance and innocence, about the timelessness of small gestures. At one moment, the American Captain embraces Harriet, and we realize: it is a comforting gesture, consoling a confused child.
This is Milos Stehlik for Chicago Public Radio’s Worldview.
Worldview film contributor Milos Stehlik is the director of Facets Multimedia.
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