Sunday, March 6, 2017
064 - The River, 1951, France. Dir. Jean Renoir.
J. Kenneth McEldowney's wife worked for the movies.
He did not.
She was a publicist. He was a florist.
He owned floral shops in Los Angeles. He had provided flowers for the first Academy Awards in 1929.
One day he made a crack about a movie MGM made. MGM was where she worked.
If making a movie is so easy, then why don't you make one.
She dared him.
He took the dare.
He sold the house. He sold the flower shops. He made a movie.
He selected a novel about a British family living in India.
A novel in which nearly no action occurs.
Where the main adult character is passive, sitting idly by giving long speeches.
Where the daughters wile away their time mooning over a young man.
A young man who has lost a leg.
Where the only boy in the family gets bitten by a snake and dies.
Told in voice-over by one of the girls, now grown up, focusing on her adolescent feelings.
To be shot in India.
In expensive Technicolor.
Where the film stock has to be shipped back to America for processing.
Where we cannot ship dolly track or cranes over, so the camera will be sitting motionless on a tripod.
To be cast by non-actors.
Non-actors of an adolescent age who sit around talking about their feelings.
All produced by a florist who has never made a movie before.
Try pitching that one to the studios and see what it gets you.
McEldowney wanted Marlon Brando, and the studios laughed at him.
What he did get was Jean Renoir.
Jean Renoir had already read the novel and wanted to make the movie.
In fact, he was attached to it.
A first-time American producer making a movie in India with a French director?
No problem.
This is about a river, remember.
Renoir can turn it into a work of art.
Renoir turned it into a work of art.
He was after all the son of one of the world's greatest painters of landscapes and girls.
He knew how to frame a picture.
He knew how to color a picture.
How wonderful that this artist was able to film in Technicolor.
McEldowney's wife, the publicist, got it on the cover of magazines.
The film was a smashing success.
It ran for weeks. It won awards. It went on to become a classic.
J. Kenneth McEldowney never made another movie.
Why should he?
He won the dare.
Jean Renoir loves rivers, so it is fitting that he would make a movie called The River. This time it is the Ganges. And the interesting cultural things that happen there.
The wooden boats. The jute mills. The temples. The candles. The music. The dancing. Diwali celebrations. Playing recorders. Taming cobras. Kolam. Curry. Kumkuma. Krishna. Radha.
A young man named Satyajit Ray would meet Jean Renoir on set. He would go on to be one of India's great filmmakers. We will see some of his movies later this year.
A young man named Subrata Mitra would meet Satyajit Ray on set. He would go on to be Ray's cinematographer.
Wes Anderson would see the film and make The Darjeeling Limited (2007), set in India, aboard a train.
The girl that plays the girl, Harriet, the oldest girl in the family (but the second-oldest girl in the group, which makes her a spectator of her older friend's experiences) and through whose eyes we see things, is well cast. She is the right age, going through adolescence, growing up, curious about the world, intelligent, inquisitive, socially awkward, wanting to be an adult, longing for love, trying to understand.
Her name is Patricia Walters. Other than one television appearance in the year after this film's release, it appears that she had never acted before and never would again.
The man that plays the man, Captain John, the object of the girls' affections, really had only one leg, giving his performance credibility not only in his physicality but also in the emotional authenticity of his responses to it.
His name is Thomas Breene. Other than a handful of bit parts and extra roles, it appears that he had seldom acted before and never would again.
The girl who plays Melanie, Harriet's half-Indian, half-British friend, has a dance in a fantasy sequence in the film, where she gets to show off her skill. Because the camera is locked on a tripod, her dance itself moves her forward into close-up and back into a master shot.
Her name is Radha. It appears that she was an established child actress in Indian films, but would never act again.
Martin Scorsese saw The River when he was nine. He believes The River and The Red Shoes are the two most beautiful color films ever made.
Another baby is born.
A girl.
The family laughs. For this family it is always a girl.
Harriet writes her poetry--
The baby and us, the big river, the whole world, and everything.
The river runs. The round world spins.
Dawn, lamplight, midnight, noon.
Sun follows day. Night, stars, and moon.
The day ends. The end begins.
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