276 The River

[nyasa]

I agree with skuhn8's comments about the acting, and would also add Arthur Shields into this movie's hall of shame: although he was a professional actor, he's dreadfully wooden in this - I think it was out of his usual range, which I think was primarily drunk Irishmen.

The children are also uniformly bad, but let's cut them some slack. Somehow I can't imagine 'Uncle Jean' getting down on his hands and knees to coax more realistic performances out of them. There's no explanation as to why Harriet has a South African accent in an otherwise British family.

But let's give a bit of respect to Esmond Knight, who managed to forge a very decent movie career despite losing an eye in WWII. If you've seen him in Powell & Pressburger's movies, you'll know how versatile he was. At the end of his career he was even in Lars von Trier's The Element of Crime.

Oh, and respect to Adrienne Corri, too - who went on to appear (nude) in A Clockwork Orange.

[lubitsch]

Well to put it short, Renoir's career in the 40's and 50's is mostly commercially and artistically disappointing and THE RIVER is no exception. We discussed THE RIVER a few weeks ago at the uni and the same problems struck us as those mentioned here. The actors are almost uniformly bad and the voiceover is embarassing telling us what we see in "poetic" words a la "Melanie sat still like a dove". While it's true that Renoir avoided the most usual cliches about India he eagerly accepted the less usual ones with India being a projection of ancient wisdom and spirituality, filling the movie with rambling philosophy which reaches its hilarious climax with the advices of the mother what the destination of a woman is: being married and getting children. Renoir may have been not interested in the political events and turmoil in India, but this doesn't excuse his abuse of India as land of wisdom.
Oh well, there are some nice shots, but it's a film where you're likely to fall asleep.

[tryavna]

But I do have a gripe and am still perplexed, especially after reading two pages of posts here without nary a mention of it: how on earth did he leave India with footage containing such horid performances from Thomas Breen (Capt. John) and Radha (Melanie)?! I applaud the use of nonprofessional actors (heck, watched and enjoyed Rossellini's St. Francis the night before) but unless I'm mistaken you still need to direct them, right? Near the end when those two were alone in the room together and trying to squeeze out their minimum dialogue it was hard not to laugh out loud. I subsequently watched the Scorsese piece and he makes mention of it as something to "get past", and there certainly is so much else there to enjoy but I have to question Renoir's state of mind to allow such consistently stiff performances to pass into posterity. Another grievance I have is the Voice Over narration, something I can understand as being helpful for audiences ignorant of Indian culture and beliefs (something certainly prevelant in 1951, and I'm sure most of us could still use a little guidance today) but when she stoops to provide commentary on what we can clearly see on the screen it reminds me of the Bladerunner Voice Over that most would agree is superflous...

which brings me to the question: how much slack are we supposed to give to The Great Directors? Renoir, schooled in silent-era narrative technique certainly knew the power of the image. So why did he slide back on such a sloppy device as incessant VO? Though lacking in the comforts of hardware (i.e. dolly track) that would provide a more forgiving slow pan to take the heinous edge of those performances, why couldn't he "get it right" with additional takes? Lack of film stock, perhaps? Anyway, am I the only here to be disturbed by these aspects of the film? Am I foolish to even notice them? Or more so, comment?

I believe Ian Christie's liner notes actually address these issues in a more direct way than does Scorsese's interview. I can't remember exactly how Christie words it, but apparently, Renoir didn't realize just how badly Breen and the other non-professionals came across until he returned to the States and began cutting the film together. But by then, it was too late. The editing process must have been a nightmare for Renoir, especially after preview audiences expressed an even greater distaste for Breen than you do above. I know that that's what prompted the greater reliance on the Narrator, who was not as prominent in the preview version. So it seems as if Renoir understood the first problem you identify (the acting) and attempted to cover it up with the second problem you identify (the voice-over narration).

To be honest, I've never really thought that much about the acting during subsequent viewings because there's so much else to take in and enjoy. I don't mean to excuse Renoir here, but considering what he was taking on (location shooting in India, directing actors in his second language, getting no help or funding from any of the major studios, etc.), I'm willing to cut him some slack. And of course, it's Renoir! If I'm willing to cut any director some slack, it's going to be him.

[skuhn8]

I believe Ian Christie's liner notes actually address these issues in a more direct way than does Scorsese's interview. I can't remember exactly how Christie words it, but apparently, Renoir didn't realize just how badly Breen and the other non-professionals came across until he returned to the States and began cutting the film together. But by then, it was too late. The editing process must have been a nightmare for Renoir, especially after preview audiences expressed an even greater distaste for Breen than you do above. I know that that's what prompted the greater reliance on the Narrator, who was not as prominent in the preview version. So it seems as if Renoir understood the first problem you identify (the acting) and attempted to cover it up with the second problem you identify (the voice-over narration).

To be honest, I've never really thought that much about the acting during subsequent viewings because there's so much else to take in and enjoy. I don't mean to excuse Renoir here, but considering what he was taking on (location shooting in India, directing actors in his second language, getting no help or funding from any of the major studios, etc.), I'm willing to cut him some slack. And of course, it's Renoir! If I'm willing to cut any director some slack, it's going to be him.

I think it was Sosenko's portion of the DVD liner notes that addressed that, but yes, he did offer an explanation...but it doesn't explain what the hell was going on at the time of filming. I mean, I assume Jean was somewhere around during these heinous performances or did he just have his assistant director do the boring story stuff while he was catting around the bazaars?

And as far as subsequent viewings, well that's what I'm hoping for and that's why I'm keeping this dvd as I'm confident I'll get over it. If Marty can overcome it I suppose I can too. But your last comment is what really came to me after viewing. Why do we cut Renoir slack when we KNOW he can--or is it "could"--do better. Was he just being lazy? or did he really lose it in the end? I never saw any of the stage/spectacle works so I don't know how those fare, but am not in too much of a hurry.

And of course one shouldn't latch onto spurious comparisons, but when Scorsese says he rates The River up there with Red Shoes but will revisit The River more often it just makes me scratch my head in wonder. I think Red Shoes is near perfect film making, character sketch, story development, pace, the works--but The River hits me as a beatifully filmed documentary interrupted with tortuous "commercial break storytime" episodes. But in my next viewing I look forward to extracting more of the philosophy: that part from mother about a woman's identity being about popping out pups was pretty messed up and seemed to be delivered as some form of genuine director-approved wisdom.

But in the end...
when all is said and done...
in the final analysis...
Renoir is a superhero among directors.
(Matt, sorry for elipses abuse...I know how you hate those little buggers!)

[tryavna]

I definitely think your points are well taken. In the long run, the acting should have been better -- especially when those actors (non-professional or not) were in the hands of Renoir, who had handled von Stroheim and Michel Simon with such aplomb. Who knows what the reasons were? But I'd be willing to bet money that, in India, Renoir had his hands full with other matters that probably seemed more pressing to him at the time: his first use of technicolor, his collaboration with a first-time producer, etc., etc. Renoir's actions after the preview -- and the fact that he noticed how problematic the acting was only after he had finished filming -- seem to suggest something along those lines.

But I definitely recommend you return to the movie at a later date. In spite of what Lubitsch has said above (and I think his criticism of Renoir's apolitical approach to India is fair, even if I disagree with him), I tend to agree with Scorsese that The River rewards multiple viewings.


And yes, Renoir is a "superhero among directors." I wonder if he ever wore leotards with a giant R printed on the chest...?

[HerrSchreck]

Let me begin this contribution by reaffirming that everyone is entitled to their taste and that there is no correct reading of a given film.

That said I find it rather sometimes dreary, sometimes fascinating that certain members of this board display-- along with the mannerisms of intelligence, and a fiery passion and urgency to get inside the element of Film-- a complete inability to operate along with anything else aside from the stiffest physical melodrama clanking atop the surface of film after film after film... Post after post after post, a straight nurturing exclusively on script, with consecutive attacks therefore on Simple Stories or Genre material, and an obvious obliviousness to how unversally massive the Small becomes when poetically elucidated with skillful images, and about how small the Massive attempts at huge sweep become when nailed down to local specificity by pure, closed melodrama. So much of poetry is more than the way lines rhyme, the straight pictoral beauty of the story told, or the employment of musical language. If a man comes to your house and announces you've won a million bucks, why dabble with his verbal delivery if you believe this beautiful news.....?

THE RIVER is an astonishing accomplishment without even taking into consideration it's visual surface. Think of the incredible gentle nature, humanity, and amazing intelligence of this director to go up out of his geography on a dime and create such a gentle, beautiful, delicate film about one entirely alien culture after another: India, the English language, the world of young women, the growing pains of female adolescence, nothing in the film has anything to do with the life Renoir himself had lived. Yet the subject matter is handled with such beauty-- so clearly reflects the intervention of this fabulous man-- with such charm, such realistic effervescence that, as the sum of it's visual components grows and accumulates like a bank account in the gut which bounces off of the psychologal interplay of the characters in your mind & gut, a lump in the throat by the end is sort of your PIN number to your membership in the human race. Between every scene I feel the great humanity of the director down on his knees smiling and working with the children, gently negotiating a response with his female lead, requiring so much of himself before he considers himself deserving of opening his mouth on the subject matter.

Bringing a modern-day souped-up-college-sophomore civil-rights, post-colonialist, or feminist anger to this film says more about the viewer than the film. It's a product of it's times. Next we'll be tearing Fats Domino another asshole for making records for white folks before the civil rights act.

PEPE LE MOKO didn't address the French Colonialist Occupation but I don't hear any DuVivier disciples around here blasting this film for it's pro-French sin.

[skuhn8]

Let me begin this contribution by reaffirming that everyone is entitled to their taste and that there is no correct reading of a given film.

That said I find it rather sometimes dreary, sometimes fascinating that certain members of this board display-- along with the mannerisms of intelligence, and a fiery passion and urgency to get inside the element of Film-- a complete inability to operate along with anything else aside from the stiffest physical melodrama clanking atop the surface of film after film after film... Post after post after post, a straight nurturing exclusively on script, with consecutive attacks therefore on Simple Stories or Genre material, and an obvious obliviousness to how unversally massive the Small becomes when poetically elucidated with skillful images, and about how small the Massive attempts at huge sweep become when nailed down to local specificity by pure, closed melodrama. So much of poetry is more than the way lines rhyme, the straight pictoral beauty of the story told, or the employment of musical language. If a man comes to your house and announces you've won a million bucks, why dabble with his verbal delivery if you believe this beautiful news.....?

huh?

[nyasa]

That said I find it rather sometimes dreary, sometimes fascinating that certain members of this board display-- along with the mannerisms of intelligence, and a fiery passion and urgency to get inside the element of Film-- a complete inability to operate along with anything else aside from the stiffest physical melodrama clanking atop the surface of film after film after film... If a man comes to your house and announces you've won a million bucks, why dabble with his verbal delivery if you believe this beautiful news.....?

Bringing a modern-day souped-up-college-sophomore civil-rights, post-colonialist, or feminist anger to this film says more about the viewer than the film. It's a product of it's times. Next we'll be tearing Fats Domino another asshole for making records for white folks before the civil rights act.

PEPE LE MOKO didn't address the French Colonialist Occupation but I don't hear any DuVivier disciples around here blasting this film for it's pro-French sin.

Don't get me wrong, I love The River. But criticism of the acting is valid, albeit with the proviso that Renoir was lumbered with what he could get on a very limited budget.

As for post-colonial anger...I'm a product of British colonialism - hence my screen-name. The River very much echoes my own childhood experience, though on a different continent.

[lubitsch]

And of course, it's Renoir! If I'm willing to cut any director some slack, it's going to be him.

But in my next viewing I look forward to extracting more of the philosophy: that part from mother about a woman's identity being about popping out pups was pretty messed up and seemed to be delivered as some form of genuine director-approved wisdom.
But in the end...
when all is said and done...
in the final analysis...
Renoir is a superhero among directors.

Sigh ... couldn't we talk about the film and only about the film instead of deciding in advance that everything has to be marvelous cause it's by Renoir?

that part from mother about a woman's identity being about popping out pups was pretty messed up and seemed to be delivered as some form of genuine director-approved wisdom.

Renoir fares quite badly if you look at his picture of women. There's no major error he didn't commit and few positive examples.

And yes, Renoir is a "superhero among directors."

Is he really? He doesn't strike me as particularly remarkable. His silent films are unimportant, his US output can't compare to the other emigres, his 50's career is mostly afailure, too. Which leaves us with a few great works between 1931 and 1939. Nothing which Duvivier, Feyder or Clair didn't accomplish, too. The nouvelle vague critics rewrote French film history in a very bad way and putting Renoir as the top director is debatable and putting him as "the auteur" is simply wrong.

Let me begin this contribution by reaffirming that everyone is entitled to their taste and that there is no correct reading of a given film.

Which doesn't mean that there are more reasonable and less reasonable ones.

That said I find it rather sometimes dreary, sometimes fascinating that certain members of this board display-- along with the mannerisms of intelligence, and a fiery passion and urgency to get inside the element of Film-- a complete inability to operate along with anything else aside from the stiffest physical melodrama clanking atop the surface of film after film after film... Post after post after post, a straight nurturing exclusively on script, with consecutive attacks therefore on Simple Stories or Genre material, and an obvious obliviousness to how unversally massive the Small becomes when poetically elucidated with skillful images, and about how small the Massive attempts at huge sweep become when nailed down to local specificity by pure, closed melodrama. So much of poetry is more than the way lines rhyme, the straight pictoral beauty of the story told, or the employment of musical language. If a man comes to your house and announces you've won a million bucks, why dabble with his verbal delivery if you believe this beautiful news.....?

1. Amusingly you try to tell us that form is no less important than content and then use an example where the content (the million dollars) is way more important than the form.
2. Appreciating form doesn't mean that you accept every nonsense. That's the problem with KILL BILL, NATURAL BORN KILLERS, TRIUMPH OF THE WILL and so on.

Think of the incredible gentle nature, humanity, and amazing intelligence of this director to go up out of his geography on a dime and create such a gentle, beautiful, delicate film about one entirely alien culture after another: India, the English language, the world of young women, the growing pains of female adolescence, nothing in the film has anything to do with the life Renoir himself had lived. Yet the subject matter is handled with such beauty-- so clearly reflects the intervention of this fabulous man-- with such charm, such realistic effervescence that, as the sum of it's visual components grows and accumulates like a bank account in the gut which bounces off of the psychologal interplay of the characters in your mind & gut, a lump in the throat by the end is sort of your PIN number to your membership in the human race. Between every scene I feel the great humanity of the director down on his knees smiling and working with the children, gently negotiating a response with his female lead, requiring so much of himself before he considers himself deserving of opening his mouth on the subject matter.

No thread about Renoir without somebody telling you that he's the embodiment of humanity. It usually comes across in such vague descriptions as yours above filled with gentleness, humanity and so on.

Havng said that however, aren't the movie's meanings, and their form of expression sublime? "the river runs, the world turns..." A boy dies, another child is born... and Renoir's camera pans up the Tree of life in one of only three camera movements in the entire movie. The value of the film doern't simply lie in conventional performance criteria, or conventional narrative - it sweeps us up into a vision of life, and death.

No they aren't sublime, they are the exact opposite. The quoted sentences are platitudes in their purest form. Or do you want to tell me that you didn't know that the world goes on? They belong in the genre of such cute simple stories like "The Little Prince" by Saint Exupery or "The Alchemist" by Paolo Coelho. The most banal commonplaces are sold as deep insights about life, eternity and so on. Often the real attitude is reactionary as you can beautifully see in the advices of the mother.
The poetry of THE RIVER is very bad women's literature at the level of Rosamunde Pilcher.

[tryavna]

And of course, it's Renoir! If I'm willing to cut any director some slack, it's going to be him.

Sigh ... couldn't we talk about the film and only about the film instead of deciding in advance that everything has to be marvelous cause it's by Renoir?

I don't think that my statement necessarily implies that I've already decided in advance that I'm going to find everything that Renoir did "marvelous." Rather, it means I'm likely to forgive certain faults in his work because I know and respect his aims. In other words, if there are things I don't like about a particular Renoir picture, I'm not going to let it get in the way of my willingness to engage with his ideas and art.

And yes, Renoir is a "superhero among directors."

Is he really? He doesn't strike me as particularly remarkable. His silent films are unimportant, his US output can't compare to the other emigres, his 50's career is mostly afailure, too. Which leaves us with a few great works between 1931 and 1939. Nothing which Duvivier, Feyder or Clair didn't accomplish, too. The nouvelle vague critics rewrote French film history in a very bad way and putting Renoir as the top director is debatable and putting him as "the auteur" is simply wrong.

It always amuses me when certain people on this board take parts of other people's posts out of context in order to make their counter-argument. If you'll look at my original post, it was clearly meant as an exaggeration for humor. (Unless you think I was seriously asking if Renoir wore the letter "R" on his shirt-fronts.)

On the other hand, it saddens me when people who post on this forum also make sweeping pronouncements. To call Renoir's silent films "unimportant" and his later career a "failure" forecloses all further debate with you because it removes all potential for dialogue. If you look again at my earlier posts, I was willing to engage with some of your ideas. (I believe that it is indeed possible to criticize Renoir, contrary to what my decontextualized quotation above might suggest.) But when you enter a thread merely to close down the discussion in it, as you've done before elsewhere (i.e., the thread on Mabuse), it's merely irritating.

Now, if Renoir (or Lang) disgusts you, that's fine, but I don't understand what you hope to accomplish by coming into these threads and telling us so. Most of us are probably older than you and set in our ways, and it's highly unlikely that you're going to convince us single-handedly that we've been wrong all these years and that Renoir was indeed a hack. Having gone through a similarly iconoclastic phase of my own a few years ago in regards to literature, I sense where you're coming from -- and, to some extent, sympathize -- but I also find it rather tiresome. (God, that sounds awfully condescending, but I hope it at least sounds reasonable.)

[ab-514]

The most banal commonplaces are sold as deep insights about life, eternity and so on. Often the real attitude is reactionary as you can beautifully see in the advices of the mother.

I think it's a mistake to equate the mother's "advice" with that of the film's. This bit is straight from Rumer Godden's novel, and it's contrasted with and filtered through Harriet's intuitive, painful knowledge that she does not have her mother's beauty and may not be able to live up to that role. On the other hand, she does have a penchant for writing beautiful poetry, and both the novel and the film celebrate her artistic potential.

I also feel it's unfair to claim that Renoir "abused" India by suggesting it is a "land of wisdom." The opening narration notes that this story could happen anywhere; it just happened to be set in India as that is where Rumer Godden was raised and where her semi-autobiographical story is therefore set. Moreover, I would argue that the documentary-like style to much of the film consciously imbues it with the perspective of a stranger, one that observes from a modest distance without the pretense of total wisdom. I like how Gilberto Perez expressed this aspect to the film:

"The River is about our foreignness in the world, our foreignness and our dailiness. This film has been construed as mystical and as preaching submission to nature. But if the river in the film is nature, it is the humanly inflected nature we call culture, very much a populated river, a river where people work and play and dream and are unhappy; and the film is about people not surrendering to the cosmic but reconciling themselves to the daily business of living in the world." [From The Material Ghost, p. 200]

[HerrSchreck]

Arrrrggggh evil men.

Sorry.

Sorry I uh have to catch a plane. I'd love to noodle here for hours & hours in this paradise but you know how it is... tons of important stuff to be done, like...read the luscious transfatty acid listings on waste paper.

[HerrSchreck]

huh?

eeh? I? Oh? You?

[lubitsch]

As usual david and HerrSchreck avoid any direct exchange of arguments. Well David enjoy the wisdoms of THE RIVER, but at least consider that I'm still male, since my last post nothing has changed in this aspect.

I don't think that my statement necessarily implies that I've already decided in advance that I'm going to find everything that Renoir did "marvelous." Rather, it means I'm likely to forgive certain faults in his work because I know and respect his aims. In other words, if there are things I don't like about a particular Renoir picture, I'm not going to let it get in the way of my willingness to engage with his ideas and art.

But you give the movie a certain bonus in advance. It doesn't seem exactly fair to movies made by less known people.

It always amuses me when certain people on this board take parts of other people's posts out of context in order to make their counter-argument. If you'll look at my original post, it was clearly meant as an exaggeration for humor. (Unless you think I was seriously asking if Renoir wore the letter "R" on his shirt-fronts.)

Sorry it was very late, I needed a quote and I obviously misunderstood yours.

On the other hand, it saddens me when people who post on this forum also make sweeping pronouncements. To call Renoir's silent films "unimportant" and his later career a "failure" forecloses all further debate with you because it removes all potential for dialogue.

This is admittedly a rather general statement, but more or less it reflects the common opinion and this thread is not the place for discussing every Renoir film. I've never heard that anyone considers Renoir a major silent director and I've seen all his movies from 1941 to 1959 which aren't regarded that high and only THE SOUTHERNER, THE WOMAN ON THE BEACH and FRENCH CAN CAN are successful in parts.[/quote]

I believe that it is indeed possible to criticize Renoir, contrary to what my decontextualized quotation above might suggest.

I hope this doesn't mean that it would be also a possibility to consider critique of Renoir unacceptable.

Now, if Renoir (or Lang) disgusts you, that's fine, but I don't understand what you hope to accomplish by coming into these threads and telling us so. Most of us are probably older than you and set in our ways, and it's highly unlikely that you're going to convince us single-handedly that we've been wrong all these years and that Renoir was indeed a hack. Having gone through a similarly iconoclastic phase of my own a few years ago in regards to literature, I sense where you're coming from -- and, to some extent, sympathize -- but I also find it rather tiresome. (God, that sounds awfully condescending, but I hope it at least sounds reasonable.)

Yeah it sounds extremely condescending especially the reference to age.
First I never wrote anywhere that Renoir is a hack. He is a good director, sometimes even very good, sometimes very bad.
Second I intend to correct the picture of French film history. Before you think that's iconoclastic and arrogant, you should consider that Renoir wasn't seen as the great director in France for a long time. His pictures were overshadowed by Clair in the early sound era and Carne in the second half of the thirties. But in the 50s came the nouvelle vague critics and completely rewrote cinema history. The result is that - to use a example - at the Sight & Sound poll - Renoir's films collected 63 votes, Carné's 15, Duvivier 1 and Clair and Feyder seem to have vanished in complete obscurity, no votes at all. Or taking the Criterion DVD output, 8 Renoirs, 3 Clairs, 2 Carnes, 1 Duvivier and no Feyder. That's the effect of this particular case of auteurism and I assure you my arrogance pales besides this.
I have no problems with iconoclasticism because somebody must have erected these icons and these people had motives which are often less than pure.
In Renoir's case it's e.g. bloody obvious that the stylization of Renoir as auteur is a hilarious mistake. Can you subsume his whole output under a certain auteur label? Find the common acpects of TONI, LA REGLE DU JEU and FRENCH CAN CAN? It's much easier done for Rene Clair.

[HerrSchreck]

As usual david and HerrSchreck avoid any direct exchange of arguments. ..at least consider that I'm still male, since my last post nothing has changed in this aspect.

Exchange? What can one say to you young lady? Ask for your personal list of Reasonable Opinions so that one can avoid these repeated brick walls with you? There's never an exchange with you. You're a walking closed book of self-opinion which conks into the same response wherever it goes.

But sure okay, Lube, it's been awhile, I'll answer your usual self-affirmations, this time attempting to null my admiration for the sublime RIVER ("admiring Renoir's work with ___________ is trite because... just because. I said so. Because I made it sound Old. No other explanation needed. Does nothing for me so it's universally invalid and silly.."). It's been about a month or so, maybe more. I see you back-pedaling with your absurdities a bit with tryavna a bit-- so capitalizing on this moment maybe theres open soil for planting...

You burble along attacking Lang, Murnau, Renoir, using descriptives like "stupid director", "trash", "garbage" etc, highlight weaknesses in Renoir's canon... yet you elevate (when you dare reveal a personal like) Pabst as a far more "intelligent" director than Murnau. Imagine the slashing good fun one would have (yet I enjoy Pabst despite his weaknesses) throwing this back in your court: talk about inconsistent-- ever see SECRETS OF A SOUL, THE JOYLESS STREET, MISTRESS OF ATLANTIS, A MODERN HERO?. You want to talk about klunky melodramatic convention, wanna tackle the mindless one-dimentional usage of Fritz Rasp in LOST GIRL or JEANNE NEY? (both of these films, by the way, are foot-kissing imitations of Murnau's visual style.) The real jewish stereotype in that film at the detective agency who doesn't want to pay his bills?-- that one walked right out of Der Sturmer. You worship a man whose two "masterpieces" WESTFRONT & PANDORA'S BOX (with according to you the "innocent" LuLu whose misfortune comes from her guilt-free, childlike gravity viz evil men-- LULU-the-prostitute: "you're going to have to kill me to get rid of me", so "because you're getting married you won't kiss me?" to the man who tries to leave her... triumphing with joy with the backstage ruining of his marriage thru sheer manipulation; talk about falling for Brooks performance the same way the men do in the text!) are far from universally recognized viz critical scholarship.

I've never once heard you qualify yourself saying "I know this is only my opinion, based on my own life which I realize No One Else Has Lived." You're at that time of life where you are Forming and, believing you are fully formed, are digging the college fun of Dueling Worldviews. I daresay when people avoid you or call you tiresome, they're saying that because They don't know how to do that anymore, to reach back to that immaturity where you didn't make room for the rest of the world. They can't Do that in front of themselves and not Feel silly. A mature adult can look at a pregnant woman telling her daughter in a film from 1951 "Bearing children is the highest calling of a woman" (paraphrasing) and not wince because there are many many women even today who happen to believe that-- it doesn't matter whether or not you agree with her worldview or not because she's not you! The film is about other people, in another place. If there are certain characters who simply enrage you to the extent of simply not being able to stand it, and this happens with a classic film from another era, I'd be loathe to encounter your reaction in real life to the human variety that exists in the world which will no doubt unhinge you to jawdropping, diner-table-chat-ruining fury. Stringbeans flying, gravy upturned...

You say there are superior interpretations of art vs others. This is like saying there's a superior way of Describing Love. This Opinion Competition of yours is such childish tedium... even when I was in college I knew very few who were this backward and furiously frightened of human variegation. If I sit on a park bench and see an old woman smiling as she picks up a stray ball rolling errant from a bunch of kindegarden kids and the moment moves me, and you say "Trite sentimental claptrap," it's an indignity to my personal experience of being Moved to even have to try and explain my internal processes to you and compare mine to yours as though we're discussing math.

Young lady you are a small organism living in a massive world which is going to show you soon enough what the difference is between College Debate and Vicious Life. The majesty that you feel you posess and which fuels your energy is worthless in and of itself-- all but the most crippled egos posess it. You are the film school equivalent of a rapper getting All In Your Face doing the ballsy fearless routine. It's this belief that there is a right way and a wrong way to interpret art that is astonishing to your peers here & makes you a general laughingstock over & over again on this board.

Your posts also show you have little understanding how difficult it is to produce beautiful images on film-- why do you think cinematographers and directors sit in awe of an accomplishment like The River? Why do you think so many interviews with directors contain ex-post-facto excuses for flawed filmmaking? It is extremely difficult to get the mundane topography & ordinary everyday objects to look so compelling, to pop with beauty... and if that weren't hard enough, to get compelling performances out of Professional actors, not to mention amateurs. Run a camera and see how much boring Building footage, Room footage, actor reciting dead-line footage you come out with. Try this with amateurs in a foreign country in a foreign language and produce 5 minutes of raw footage halfway as compelling as THE RIVER... then we can talk. I hear this same kind of lack of understanding when it comes to discussions of Ozu... TOKYO STORY for instance just being a straight melodrama of a visit by granpa, nothing "special"... only a person who has never considered the difficulty of crafting compelling narratives could bloop right over how deep and full and alive with meaning-- and therefore how unbelievably poetic-- Ozu's simplicity is. I know that "cute" is the last thing you want to be regarded as, but your hifalutin poopooing of settled masterpieces, implied certainty that you'll blow the roof off with your Future Work, that you'll easily exceed the material deemed trite by you... this is the signature of your age group (though we're talking a very isolated case here) and is, in a sense, cute. Wait until you get out there & experience the difference between college debate & vicious showbiz life. Walk around with hifalutin superiority & disdain in front of the gin manufacturers and the agents and news moguls who'll wind up being your boss and they'll ping pong your ego so far down into the rubbish heap you'll be begging to jump thru hoops to work on a Colgate commerical. Why do you think there are so precious few Greats nowadays? Because the real stars are the agents, producers, ownership company directors, and they love putting talent in it's place as they despise what outshines their self-perception. Come on with this sorta vitriolic Truffaut routine and they'll throw parties rolling on the floor pissing their clothes running your SCRATCH'N'WIN commericals on VHS in compilation over & over again.

[ben d banana]

...at least consider that I'm still male, since my last post nothing has changed in this aspect.

This is the second time lubitsch has stated this, originally in direct response to being asked. Is it all part of the "How dare he!?!" debating technique that his nuts are continually chopped off?

I still don't agree with his take, clearly see the willful iconoclasm of his age, don't know where he's attending a course in strictly contrarian film study, etc, but the argument against him that everyone has different opinions/responses/feelings while he is arguing for difference seems to miss the point. Sweeping general pronouncements are hardly the most effective technique for an open exchange of ideas, I believe he's admitted as much himself, but as he's stated, he's arguing against the received wisdom of decades of film study which originated in the same manner, and against the self-proclaimed cinema experts on this forum (and elsewhere).

Lubitsch, Schreck is right that your opinions may well be more compelling if you argued for something rather than against. Elsewhere, David has repeatedly commented on the need for a reassessment of 30's French cinema, presumably to rediscover great "lost" films, or to lubitsch's dismay, directors. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but this open-ness to the "new" is as much what lubitsch is arguing for as what he is more plainly arguing against.

[tryavna]

On the whole, I have to thank Lube for the more open tone of his most recent post. It's much easier to engage with him now.

You give the movie a certain bonus in advance. It doesn't seem exactly fair to movies made by less known people.

To this, I plead guilty. At the same time, I suspect most us are likely to give "bonus" points to the directors we love. (As Schreck points out, you seem willing to give Pabst a similar benefit of the doubt.) It's just human nature: we excuse what we view as minor shortcomings in artists we like. Renoir happens to be one of my favorite directors. His humanistic world-view -- his willingness to accept that "everyone has their reasons," whether we understand them or not -- is something quite rare and lovely. In that sense, Renoir's films are much like Walt Whitman's poetry. Do I like everything either artist did? No. But I do admire their willingness and desire to encompass multiple points of view.

Certainly, the CC (and everyone else, for that matter) privileges Renoir, just as they priviledge Kurosawa and Felini. Do they over-privilege these directors? Well, if it involves a sort of zero-sum game in which the inclusion of multiple films by these directors necessarily prevents inclusion of films by Feyder or Pabst (both of whom I'd like to see enter the CC), then the answer has to be yes. At the same time, I believe that these directors were masters of their medium, and so I don't feel as though we're wasting our time viewing their films -- even their less successful ones.

So although I understand what you're saying, I think you might be throwing the baby out with the bath-water. If we want to see certain directors elevated in the canon, I don't think we have to knock other directors off their pedestals.

This is admittedly a rather general statement, but more or less it reflects the common opinion and this thread is not the place for discussing every Renoir film. I've never heard that anyone considers Renoir a major silent director and I've seen all his movies from 1941 to 1959 which aren't regarded that high and only THE SOUTHERNER, THE WOMAN ON THE BEACH and FRENCH CAN CAN are successful in parts.

As you say, these are generalizations. As with many generalizations, there is some truth to what you're saying about Renoir's post-1940 career. At the same time, you tend to obscure the fact that many well-established and astute critics count The Southerner and The River among Renoir's finest accomplishments. (It's been ages since I've seen THE SOUTHERNER, but I do count THE RIVER as a remarkable achievement. And for answers to your criticisms about it, I would point to Ab-514's excellent post above.)

I hope this doesn't mean that it would be also a possibility to consider critique of Renoir unacceptable.

Not at all. I think any artist is open to critique. That's the nature of scholarly inquiry within the field of aesthetics or within the humanities in general. No less an artist than Satyajit Ray, who was a great admirer of Renoir's work, was troubled by Renoir's unwillingness to engage the politics of India. Although Renoir was restricted to a particular point of view (he was after all adapting a pre-existing Rumer Godden's novel), the "timelessness" or, more accurately, the vagueness of the film's historical context tends to elide the political and social realities of India c. 1950. This is indeed problematic for anyone who deplores colonialism. But it does not mean that Renoir should be denounced as an apologist for colonialism (or male chauvanism, for that matter).

Yeah it sounds extremely condescending especially the reference to age.[/quote
Sorry for that. But I honestly do understand where you're coming from. I just feel that it was a stage I moved through and beyond

In Renoir's case it's e.g. bloody obvious that the stylization of Renoir as auteur is a hilarious mistake. Can you subsume his whole output under a certain auteur label? Find the common acpects of TONI, LA REGLE DU JEU and FRENCH CAN CAN? It's much easier done for Rene Clair.

Well, as I've stated elsewhere, I have a love-hate relationship with the auteur theory. More to the point, however, I've never really argued that Renoir should be understood through that theoretical lens. Nevertheless, I would still argue that he was a master filmmaker. (One doesn't have to fit the auteur mold to be a great film director, no?)

[ellipsis7]

It can be suggested that Renoir's THE WOMAN ON THE BEACH and THE RIVER directly reflect the aftermath of WW2, the males wounded by their experience and almost impotent, the women exploring (yet not yet asserting) their identity, along with the search for alternative life models, away from the traditional Western model, at the root of the recent conflict... Thus in rhythms of Indian life and death, and the flow of THE RIVER (no tigers or elephants!) are found a different approach to acceptance and a form of peace...

[HerrSchreck]

...at least consider that I'm still male, since my last post nothing has changed in this aspect.

This is the second time lubitsch has stated this, originally in direct response to being asked. Is it all part of the "How dare he!?!" debating technique that his nuts are continually chopped off? .

Ben I know what I'm talking about. That is not a taunt.

[zedz]

Two quick points

You give the movie a certain bonus in advance. It doesn't seem exactly fair to movies made by less known people.

To this, I plead guilty. At the same time, I suspect most us are likely to give "bonus" points to the directors we love.

I don't see this as giving anybody any bonuses: it's the basic humility that is essential to any true appreciation of art. You have to trust that the artist knows what he or she is doing until they demonstrate otherwise. For an artist with as impressive a track record as Renoir (or fill in the blank) this is especially important. For many contemporary reviewers, The Rules of the Game was self-evidently incompetent in its confusion of registers. Instead of engaging in a knee-jerk reaction to something you don't like, try assuming that the director might have known more about what they were doing than you do, and try to imagine what they were aiming at.

In Renoir's case it's e.g. bloody obvious that the stylization of Renoir as auteur is a hilarious mistake. Can you subsume his whole output under a certain auteur label? Find the common acpects of TONI, LA REGLE DU JEU and FRENCH CAN CAN? It's much easier done for Rene Clair.

If you're judging the films purely on the most superficial levels of style, then yes, any three random Renoirs can seem pretty different, but if you look deeper, the filmmaker's consistent philosophy is what's animating that style in each case. An awful lot of Renoir is driven by his interest in realism, and specifically in preserving on film the integrity of character and performance. This impulse was expressed in many, diverse ways, from location shooting, the casting of non-actors, long takes, deep focus, his distinctive rehearsal procedure, and the later multi-camera experiments.

[montgomery]

One reason the performances are weak might be that English was not Renoir's first language.
As for the voiceover, Renoir was a fan of the source novel, and I assume he wanted to have some of the beautiful passages (in his opinion) read aloud, and to show them being interpreted into film images.
As for Renoir himself, I think it's ludicrous to claim that he's not a master director. You may believe that he's not an auteur, but auteurism itself is just a theory expounded by the very critics that you blame for wrongly elevating Renoir's status to an auteur.

[HerrSchreck]

I don't see this as giving anybody any bonuses: it's the basic humility that is essential to any true appreciation of art. You have to trust that the artist knows what he or she is doing until they demonstrate otherwise. For an artist with as impressive a track record as Renoir (or fill in the blank) this is especially important. For many contemporary reviewers, The Rules of the Game was self-evidently incompetent in its confusion of registers. Instead of engaging in a knee-jerk reaction to something you don't like, try assuming that the director might have known more about what they were doing than you do, and try to imagine what they were aiming at.

I've been wanting to talk about this since Zedz posted it the other day, but the topic is so essential & far-reaching that I reserved comment until I had a half hour or so of solitude to really get inside of this.

What zedz is talking about here just can't be over-emphasized, not ever. It's the root of much of the best that goes on inside a person, usually constitutes the clicking on of a cartoon light bulb above that person's head. It's a humility which creates a style of human and thereby tends to (hopefully) rarely dim. The point of it's first appearance draws a line between the person's youthful days of ignorance & their subsequent future armed with a heightened sense of perception. And in the broader sense of human variety, it's the existence of this humble quality that tends to draw a similar line... this time between Fools and the (insert synonym for “those with understandingâ€

[Arn777]

A review of the French dvd vs Criterion: http://www.dvdclassik.com/Critiques/le_fleuve_river.htm
Note the differnce in colour, film critic Simsolo who produced the disc stated the Criterion's picture was too colourful, the French dvd is more yellow, but Criterion's is cleaner and sharper.

[ellipsis7]

Having recently (nov 05) twice visited the RENOIR RENOIR exhibition in the new Gehry Cinametheque Francaise, and seen the father & son's paintings, film stills, and movie extracts, all juxtaposed, I don't think the CC colour grading is off... It's very much from the Renoir colour palette... So pas de probleme pour moi...

The extra yellow in the French transfer makes the skin tones appear green/olive and unreal...

[solaris72]

Having recently (nov 05) twice visited the RENOIR RENOIR exhibition in the new Gehry Cinametheque Francaise, and seen the father & son's paintings, film stills, and movie extracts, all juxtaposed, I don't think the CC colour grading is off... It's very much from the Renoir colour palette... So pas de probleme pour moi...

The extra yellow in the French transfer makes the skin tones appear green/olive and unreal...

Agreed...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.