The River

I do not quibble with the critical consensus about Jean Renoir’s detour to India on his way back from Hollywood to Europe. Again the documentary aspects are marvelous, and in their first Technicolor film (another Scorsese-inspired and Criterion-produced restoration), director Jean and cinematographer Claude live up to the painterly heritage of Pierre Auguste. But somehow Renoir does not have the special aptitude of the neorealist in directing non-professional actors -- too many come across as amateurish rather than authentic, which is disabling to the story and the characters. Adapted from Rumer Godden’s autobiographical novel about growing up in an English colonial enclave, but entranced by the life of India flowing past like the Ganges, the story focuses on three teenaged girls who have a crush on a visiting veteran who lost his leg in the war. Now that I think of it, that must have been WWI, but it’s indicative of the apolitical context of the film that it hardly matters whether it’s before or after Gandhi. Girls will blossom into womanhood under any regime; death will intrude but life will go on. Like the river. (1951, dvd, r.) *7*