276 The River

[otis]

I don't think the CC colour grading is off... It's very much from the Renoir colour palette

I saw The River in 35mm at the National Gallery in DC last summer, and it looked like the Criterion disc, not like the French DVD.

That may just be cos they used the same Scorsese-sponsored restored version that Criterion did. It doesn't prove it corresponds to the original. And one of Noël Simsolo's points is that the light in India is different to the light in France or a studio in Hollywood or Germany (he contrasts it with Fritz Lang's Indian films). His concern is with Claude Renoir's colour palette rather than Auguste's. I've no idea if he's right, but he does sound persuasive. And Scorsese has been involved in other problematic colour restorations, eg Tales of Hoffmann.

davidhare, are you out there? Any comments?

[ellipsis7]

Just to note the RENOIR RENOIR exhibition including the work of all the Renoir's including Claude, Pierre-Auguste & Jean... I'm judging against colour stills from THE RIVER displayed at the Cinematheque, also the clear point of the juxtaposition was the consistency and commonness of themes and treatment, including colour between the paintings and the films...

It's a totally valid point that that laboratory processes and chemical composition of emulsions have altered since the 1950's and three strip technicolour, with huge evolution in colour rendering, and inevitable consequences for very fine faithfulness of exact shading...

See chapter on Color in Bruce Block's excellent THE VISUAL STORY just to see how complicated the whole issue of colour on film is...

[otis]

david, every time I read one of your fascinating Technicolor-related posts I make a mental note to buy the Richard Haines book you've mentioned. One of these days...

Didn't realise the Cinematheque show had paintings by Claude (I'm just jealous cos I didn't get to go). The only time I've seen The River projected was as the NFT in London about 15 years ago, and I don't remember colours nearly as bright as on the Criterion disc. But this proves nothing, as I don't know what kind of print they had. Plus I don't seem to be as colour sensitive as some people. So I'll shut up.

I'll admit my previous post was perhaps just an excuse to get at Scorsese, the reverence for whom as some grand old shaman of cinema history manifested by many posters on this forum (and elsewhere) I'm always amazed at. I thought his Personal Journey Through American Movies documentary was an incredibly shoddy rehashing of simplistic auteurist myths most people wrote off years ago. And his one on Italian cinema played like an advert for the Vatican. They did have some lovely clips though.

[ellipsis7]

Exhibition is over since early January. Well you can always get hold of the catalogue with extensive essays.

I too have read Jean Renoir's writings and related works by, on and about (17 JR related books sit on my shelf, and there will 27 of his films on DVD here when TONI & SWAMP WATER arrive)... He sought not to emulate his father, but arguably came the full circle back to him...

Oh and there were 3 pots thrown and decorated by Jean - charming with raw style, but demonstrating ultimately why he gave that line of work up...

There was also a Catherine Hessling dress from NANA - tiny almost child sized...

There was home movie from THE RIVER shoot which was I'm pretty sure in colour...

And remember the canvases were the Pierre-Auguste Renoir orginals (not repros), displayed alongside video projected excerpts of the films, stills, other material etc.. Sometimes the juxtaposition was stretched - the portrait of young Jean in cap, jacket and breeches holding a hunting gun, alongside the shoot from LA REGLE DU JEU, but generally it worked..



It was Jean and Claude's mastery of technicolour on their first outing that was their stroke of genius... Three strip is a fascinating process with beautiful results not fully obtainable today - several years back publicly interviewed Jack Cardiff about filming with it, more an art than a science he said, with a dastardly prism that had to be perfectly aligned...

[ellipsis7]

Check out also the 95 or so mentions of Jean Renoir in the FBI files from the '40s on...



Very interesting paper by Christopher Faulkner.

[Dorian Gray]

Here are some larger screencaps from both Criterion and R2 French discs.

[Narshty]

The BBC have just broadcast a radio adaptation of Rumer Godden's novel, which someone, somewhere might find of interest to compare with the film. (That 'Listen Again' link will only be functional until next Sunday though.)

EDIT: Fuck me, it's dreadful. Really, really painful. They've dug up actors more wooden than the film - the children all sound like they're reading Remembrance Day speeches in assembly. For masochists only.

[jcelwin]

From the interview with Scorsese, it doesn't sound like he is actually that fond of the movie. He admires is, but I'm not sure he really thinks it is a masterpiece.

That said, art is subjective. Don't try dropping names to prove a point. You don't have to like something because someone else does. Regardless of who they are.

[skuhn8]

Oh, lord! I hope we don't have to go through all this again....

I, for one, enjoy the film, have watched my CC dvd several times now, but would have to say that if those critics/filmmakers heralded it as a masterpiece I would stand on the other side of the fence lobbing imitations of the line readings at them. Without a doubt this film has some of the best visuals, a tour de force for the eyes, but the acting keeps on pulling it back to bad B-pic status. Throw in a couple toughs and a gangster's mole, desaturate color accordingly and then it might be salvagable.

That being said, I'm not saying that Bazin et al. are wrong, cause it is true that art is subjective, just don't see what their talking about except to rehabilitate the stage of a great filmmakers career that is often neglected (and for good reason IMO).

[ellipsis7]

Well IMHO it certainly is a masterpiece... The way Renoir lets the rhythms of life and the river overwhelm the simple turns of plot and individual existences... I'm projecting the CC disc on large screen through HDMI linked system, and it looks simple stunning...

[skuhn8]

Watched mine projected as well, and yes, stunning, wonderfully filmic transfer as others (schreck et al) pointed out elsewhere. But what constitutes a masterpiece then? Even your favorite V8 engine should be hitting on all eight cylinders to meet top blue book, right? So if the actor's are straight out of community theatre then you can still put it up there with Grand Illusion and Rules of the Game? Ok, then what word would you use to describe those two films then, films where Jean really hit every target dead on?

[ellipsis7]

I think that just as RULES OF THE GAME and GRAND ILLUSION are pre WWII masterpieces, THE RIVER is his post war masterpiece. There is huge difference to the context of both. RULES OF THE GAME would then be his overall, above all, masterpiece.

Now it happens that Paul Schrader has addressed the issue of a Film Canon in the current issue of Film Comment. It's a fascinating, lengthy and probing article. Strongly recommend reading the same - can be ordered online from Film Society of Lincoln Center. He finishes...

Where to begin? Bloom offers an interesting starting point in The Western Canon. If one could only have one author in the literary canon, he asks, who would it be? Without whom could such a canon not properly exist? The answer: Shakespeare. If one could have but one work by Shakespeare, which would it be? Hamlet. A literary canon is not conceivable, therefore, without Hamlet. Bloom begins his canon with a discussion of Hamlet, branching out from there.

For me the artist without whom there could not be a film canon is Jean Renoir, and the film without which a canon is inconceivable is The Rules of the Game.

I would wholeheartedly agree with Schrader, whom I spent a couple of days with last year... And like Shakespeare Jean Renoir has made more than one masterpiece...

[tryavna]

He finishes...

Where to begin? Bloom offers an interesting starting point in The Western Canon. If one could only have one author in the literary canon, he asks, who would it be? Without whom could such a canon not properly exist? The answer: Shakespeare. If one could have but one work by Shakespeare, which would it be? Hamlet. A literary canon is not conceivable, therefore, without Hamlet. Bloom begins his canon with a discussion of Hamlet, branching out from there.

For me the artist without whom there could not be a film canon is Jean Renoir, and the film without which a canon is inconceivable is The Rules of the Game.

I didn't know people still cited Harold Bloom to make an argument....

[toiletduck!]

I didn't know people still cited Harold Bloom to make an argument....

You really need to read the entire article (which is quite good) to get the full context.

-Toilet Dcuk

[tryavna]

You really need to read the entire article (which is quite good) to get the full context.

Right, I didn't mean to sound dismissive of Schrader's article without even having read it. It's just that I'm genuinely surprised when I find people seriously (and straight-facedly) applying Bloom to aesthetics. Bloom isn't just out of fashion; he doesn't really connect with what's going on in the discipline of English at all. I guess in that respect he's a bit like Francis Fukuyama is for political scientists.

Anyway, I'm definitely going off-topic. I'll try to read Schrader's article in full when I get a chance.

[jguitar]

Bloom isn't just out of fashion; he doesn't really connect with what's going on in the discipline of English at all.

I thought that David Bordwell laid to rest "what's going on in the discipline of English" as far as film goes with Post-Theory and Making Meaning.

[tryavna]

I thought that David Bordwell laid to rest "what's going on in the discipline of English" as far as film goes with Post-Theory and Making Meaning.

Lots and lots of film courses are still taught primarily by English faculty, so I don't know.... English departments are like the Borg, absorbing all other humanities disciplines that come into their path.

But I was speaking more generally, anyway. Bloom isn't taken that seriously by literary scholars to begin with, which is why I initially found Schrader's attempt to apply him to film studies surprising.

[toiletduck!]

Schrader isn't so much applying Bloom to film studies as he is to canonical studies. The majority of the article delves into the origin and ideas behind the creation of a canon, of any sort. Schrader uses Bloom as a watermark as far as the concept of a canon is concerned, but the two paragraphs quoted are quite literally the only time in a lengthy article that Bloom is remotely mentioned in relation to the study of film itself, not to mention that they are also the final two paragraphs of the article proper.

-Toilet Dcuk

[ellipsis7]

Yeah, I did not mean to focus debate on Bloom, in a very significant piece by Schrader...

[jguitar]

Lots and lots of film courses are still taught primarily by English faculty, so I don't know.... English departments are like the Borg, absorbing all other humanities disciplines that come into their path.

But I was speaking more generally, anyway. Bloom isn't taken that seriously by literary scholars to begin with, which is why I initially found Schrader's attempt to apply him to film studies surprising.

Point taken. And your Borg analogy is priceless--well done.

I was contemplating creating a thread on the Schrader article. I'm not averse to canon-formation; at least I think that the conversations it generates about aesthetics are worthwhile. But reading the article, I think we can be glad that Schrader never wrote that book that he was supposed to write. He wastes a lot of time covering ground that has been exhaustively covered elsewhere, and by abler hands. When he gets down to talking about film, there are some nice moments (I'd be more specific but I don't have it in front of me at the moment). I think that he could have tried to lay out his thinking on film aesthetics without recourse to all the history. It's like he's constantly justifying his project to himself.

[GringoTex]

But I was speaking more generally, anyway. Bloom isn't taken that seriously by literary scholars to begin with

Absolutely untrue. He's not much use to the latest English Department reception studies fad (or to the deconstructionists before them), but his textual analyses has been powerfully influential. Most people only know him by his Western Canon book anyway, which has little to do with the bulk of his literary criticism.

[ellipsis7]

Anyway this is about THE RIVER... Point is you have to make your personal pantheon, and damn the detractors!...

[tryavna]

But I was speaking more generally, anyway. Bloom isn't taken that seriously by literary scholars to begin with

Absolutely untrue. He's not much use to the latest English Department reception studies fad (or to the deconstructionists before them), but his textual analyses has been powerfully influential. Most people only know him by his Western Canon book anyway, which has little to do with the bulk of his literary criticism.

I really don't know about that. Neither new historicism nor cultural studies (probably the two dominant methodologies in the discipline) owes much to Bloom. In fact, as far back as 1986, Robert Weisbuch was lambasted for employing a Bloomian anxiety-of-influence approach in Atlantic Double-Cross. Poor Weisbuch more or less apologized for the whole book a few years later. (I guess people who work in narrative theory still use some of Bloom's early stuff, though.)

Back to Schrader, I guess I'm not opposed to the idea of a de facto canon. Obviously, if a student is majoring in a discipline, then he/she needs to master a certain core set of texts to be able to converse intelligently about the field. It's certainly true for psychology, philosophy, and English, so why not film studies? But most consumers (or non-majors) have a very different agenda when they dip into a subject like classic literature or film, so it seems much more useful to structure the sort of study that Schrader is talking about by genre, auteur, national language, or theme.

So I guess I'm more or less in agreement with jguitar here. (Of course, I've only read the parts of Schrader's essay that up on the Film Comment site, and I'm guessing that's only about 25% of the full essay.)

[skuhn8]

Hi. The River, folks. The River. Not Bloom.

[monkeybrow]

Fantastic film!

Radha Burnier's traditional dance number left me stunned...what a wonderful sequence.

Interesting to see what became of her later in life...