Tom Hopper | Les Misérables / 2012

look down

by Douglas Messerli

 

Claude Michel Schönberg and Alan Boubil (book, based on the novel by Victor Hugo and their original musical in French), Herbert Kretzmer (lyrics, with additional text by James Fenton), William Nicholson (screenplay), Tom Hopper (director) Les Misérables / 2012

 

Tom Hopper’s grand operetta, brought to film from the extraordinarily successful Broadway musical, begins with an improbable scene in which prisoners are forced to pull by rope a huge ship into dry dock while they sing of their humble position in life, “Look Down,” averting their glances into the eyes of their torturers to prevent themselves from further punishment. Among the men is the hero of this work, Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), who as the ship is finally pulled in, is forced by his arch enemy, the head prison guard Jauvert (Russell Crowe), to single-handedly pull in the huge flag, which, like Christ bearing the cross of his own death, he delivers up to his torturer.

      Of course, in beginning with the concept of “looking down”—the position in society in which most of the “miserable” characters of this piece exist—the musical also posits its opposite, as Valjean—freed soon after by Jauvert, but haunted through the early part of the film by his parole documents—strives to “look up.”  Particularly through the religiously inspired scenes, as Valjean aspires to gain faith, the songs switch to inspirational-like ditties, the most notable of which is the poor former factory-worker turned prostitute Fantine’s (Anne Hathaway) paean to life as it might have been, “I Dreamed a Dream,” possibly the best song of the film.

     So is the pattern of this film revealed, as various figures, including the evil Jauvert, vertiginously walking a high ledge overlooking the city, shout-out in chant-like pieces the necessity of “looking down,” while the score alternates with quieter pleas for beauty and grace. That pattern, indeed, is at the center of this sprawling work’s various directions, as some characters seek out love (Valjean, Marius, Cosette, Éponine), others freedom through revolution, and still others look into the deep depths from which they have risen or in which they, like Madame Thénardier and her husband, remain. Unfortunately, it seems, neither the original musical nor this film version, offers anything in between. Les Misérables, it seems, are unhappy because they live at the extremes, phantom beings out of some vast tapestry that keeps weaving and unweaving itself, each figure chasing or running from one another like laboratory rats.

     If anything, director Tom Hopper—perhaps in an attempt to maintain the popular theatricality of a work seen on stage by millions of adoring fans—further exaggerates the dichotomous pattern of the work, lifting his fussbudget camera to the towering heights only to drop into the lowest depths (the sewer scene is hard to endure), pulling away momentarily from his players only to rush forward, as the figures, like Sunset Boulevard’s Nora Desmond, call out that they are ready for their “close ups.” Although one can commend Hopper for asking the singers to perform their songs in real time, the constant placement of his camera up and close creates such an artificial feeling that, except for in the large group scenes, we must wonder at times whether these characters have torsos and legs.

      In fact, they don’t. Like so many rag dolls, each fills the large cinema screen with tears and perspiration running down his or her face—or even worse, as in the “Lovely Ladies” scene, with macabre patches of red, white, and black paint swabbed across her eyes, cheek, and nose. At times, particularly in the comic scenes involving the Thénardiers (Helena Bonham Carter and Sasha Baron Cohen) it is almost as if the performers have escaped from another movie, in this case, Burton’s Sweeney Todd, to suddenly reappear in Les Misérables. At least this dour film of eternal suffering has these few comic moments!

       Allowing his international cast to use their own dialects, from the Aussie-vocalizations of Jackman, the Kiwi shout-outs of Crowe, and the apparently Cockney utterings of the Dickensian-like David Huddelstone (as Gavroche)—all of whom are supposedly French—Hopper creates a mish-mash of character-types that, once more, squeeze any humanity from them.

       Hopper’s over-the-top direction is particularly unfortunate for Jackman—whose presence in this film was, in part, what drew me to the theater—because his full and rich baritone voice on display in his stage-version of Oklahoma! here seems considerably strained, perhaps due to the fact that he was forced to lose 30 pounds in order to appear like a man who has just spent nineteen years in chains. As I’ve suggested, since Javert does little more that howl, I have no idea whether Crowe can sing or not.

      While I’m at it, I should admit that I came to Les Misérables with a bit of a chip on my shoulder, mostly because I see the lumbering and bumbling musical score, similar to Cats, as being responsible, in part, for the death of the American Broadway musical. Yes, both works have moments of lilting melodies, but the unimaginative tunes of the rest, combined with never ending series of banally rhymed couplets nearly drive me to despair. If any tears flowed from my eyes—and a few did; I’ve admitted elsewhere I’m a sentimentalist and Les Misérables is sentimentality determined to try to break your heart—I might almost attribute them to the pain inflicted by its music and lyrics. It is hard to imagine, for example, actually having to sing the following passage:

 

           Javert:  Now Prisoner 24601, your time is up and your parole's begun.

                        You know what that means?

           Jean Valjean:  Yes, it means I'm free.

           Javert:  No.

           [hands him a yellow paper]

           Javert:  Follow to the letter your itinerary, this badge of shame you wear               

                       until you die. It warns that you're a dangerous man.

           Valjean: I stole a loaf of bread. My sisters child was close to death, and we were 

                        starving...
           Javert:  And you will starve again unless you learn the meaning of the law!

           Valjean : I've learnt the meaning of those nineteen years; a slave of the law.

           Javert:  Five years for what you did. The rest because you tried to run, yes 24601...

           Valjean: My name is Jean Valjean!

           Javert:  And I'm Javert! Do not forget my name. Do not forget me, 24601.

 

     Or consider this inane rhyme, repeated throughout another song:

 

           Marius: In my life, there is someone who touches my life. Waiting near...

           Eponie: Waiting here...   

     

      Despite that, however, I must admit the orchestration was quite effective.

    And then, there were those wonderful surprises, such as the performance throughout of Eddie Redmayne as Marius, a handsome young man with a glorious voice, particularly well employed in “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables,” as he sings of the passing of his revolutionary partners. Quite moving also was Samantha Bark’s rendering, despite the drip-drop of rain down her face, of “On My Own.” Throughout, Amanda Seyfried as Cosette sang quite waveringly beautifully.

      But in the end, none of them could save Hopper’s up and down, in and out cinematic eye-balling of this war-horse of a crowd-pleaser. My comments, surely, will mean little to those thousands of devotees of this over-the-top display of loving and hating types, and even I did share the feelings of a slightly grumpy elderly man who left the theater loudly muttering, “That was most boring movie I’ve ever seen.” And although I’ve heard of thunderous applauses in local movie theaters, no one applauded at the early morning showing I attended. I might have simply called Hopper’s film, “ponderous.” It’s hard to “Hear the People Sing” without of real human being in sight.

 

Los Angeles, January 3, 2013

Reprinted from Nth Position [England] (February 2013).

John Brahm | Hangover Square / 1945

better off

by Douglas Messerli

 

Barré Lyndon (screenplay, based on the novel by Patrick Hamilton), John Brahm (director) Hangover Square / 1945

 

For the most part in writing about the essays in My Queer Cinema I have attempted to make a clear delineation between the actor and his or her character. Only in the case of figures such as Ivan Novello, Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, Rock Hudson, and a few others, wherein the homosexual actor, seemingly conspiring with their writers and director to create coded gay figures inside the heterosexual outer shell of the character required by the plot, do I bring in the issue of the actor’s sexuality as being important to the film. As I joke, Grant and Hudson played gay coded figures so often that you might have thought that they had written into their contracts. And actors such as Novello, Farley Granger, Anthony Perkins, and other Hitchcock heroes were simply too beautiful for that brilliant director to resist suggesting other sexual complications in his characterizations. Hepburn, as Cukor argued, was determined to play certain strong female feminist roles which, in the terms of Hollywood character stereotypes of the day, brought her closer to lesbian identity.

       Although not all of them were gay or lesbian, the numerous crossdressers and pansies of the earlier films had required a certain male or female type which often included the sexual “aberration” which the role satirized or mocked.     

     And so too in the 1940 and 50s there were some actors who simply because of their voices and/or mannerisms were hired to play villains or comic supporting roles who, although necessarily presented as heterosexuals in the script, read to most of their audiences as being gay, bisexual, or lesbian, hinting at their actual sexuality even though they generally denied it or joined in lavender marriages to hide it. Since they were villains or fussy second bananas and homosexuality was perceived as representing evil or at least abnormal behavior, film casters and directors did not at all mind that they behaved slightly odd or queer both in and out of costume. In fact it was why they were hired. The examples of these individuals are actually quite numerous, but three immediately stand out, each of whom made their greatest impact in movies of the 1940s and 50s when even cleverly coded films were carefully combed through by the Hays people: Raymond Burr, Vincent Price, and the writer I am focusing on in this essay, Laird Cregar. These three all appeared in noirs, horror, and monster films which permitted a niche in which their morality was at issue which made it allowable for them to appear somewhat gay; they were after all “wicked” or, better yet, psychologically sick beings according to the script. Both Burr and Price would also occasionally play heroes, as Cregar might have if he had lived longer.

      Clearly in the 1945 British film Hangover Square Cregar was attempting to escape being typecast as he had recently been in the 1941 film  I Wake Up Screaming and The Lodger (1944) where he played psychopathic murderers. For Cregar, in particular, it was also a matter of his weight of he had been conscious throughout his life. In being asked to play a character in John Brahm’s newest film, he was scripted to play a distinguished British composer named George Harvey Bone—already a clue that there was something strange about him; if you recall Katherine Hepburn pseudonymously names Cary Grant, Mr. Bone in Bringing Up Baby—but was romantically involved with two women, the proper Barbara Chapman (Faye Marlowe) and a night-club singer Netta Longdon (Linda Darnell) which he felt might be used to his advantage to create for himself a more romantic, leading man. And in order to gain more acceptance as such a figure he underwent a severe crash diet, mostly through the consumption of amphetamines, which forced the studio to film chronologically so that his weight-loss appeared to be part of the plot itself and resulted in his sometimes erratic behavior. Within a few weeks after shooting, Cregar died of a fatal heart attack brought on by his weight loss, and did not get to see the final film when it was released.

 

     Part of this desire to change his image surely had to do with the fact that just two years earlier Cregar’s lover, the young actor David Bacon, was attacked and killed with a knife. The tabloids quite quickly linked Cregar to Bacon describing him as “such a good friend” of the victim, leading Darryl F. Zanuck to arrange for a Silver Screen article to romantically link him with actor Dorothy McGuire which reported that, despite his weight, the actor was considered quite sexy by many women. Surely Cregar sought to erase the weight equation.* 

   We all know that there is no “gay sounding voice,” that homosexual men speak in thousands of various tones and intonations just as gay men look as different from one another as does the general population. And yet, I have to admit there are certain timbres of the voice, careful intonations of words that inexplicably hint at the individual’s sexuality. Both George Sanders, who also performs in this film and Cregar simply “sound” gay—although Sanders, who was married several times including to two of the Gabor sisters, Zsa Zsa and Magda, was apparently not homosexual—and directors cast these individuals as effete wicked beings for precisely this reason (Sanders plays such figures, for example, in Rebecca and, most notably, All About Eve). Cregar is simply possessed of such a voice, and even revealing that he was after all quite good looking, has a face that was made for this role: a fussy, effete, artist—just such characteristics needed also to play Oscar Wilde, a stage production of which in 1940 won him rave reviews and the attention of the Hollywood studios—who in this case is also psychologically affected by noise (a situation that hints of the same condition of Poe’s Roderick Usher) that makes it clear that we will never win the love of the showgirl Netta, for whom he wastes his precious energies while he should composing his concerto by spinning off popular songs for her new musical, Gay Love**—surely not an accidental use of the word “gay” since Cary Grant had publicly revealed that word’s urban usage in his 1938 film Bringing Up Baby.

 

     Although, Bone is convinced of his love for Netta, even she hints that although he has spoken nice words, he was never even attempted to “get close,” and she describes her seduction of him as a painful experience to both her friend Mickey (Michael Dyne) and the man to whom she gets engaged to be married, Eddie Castairs (Glenn Langan). Her love for him is a pretense to milk her for her successful musical numbers. 

   Barbara, the music-loving pianist, who is the daughter of the great conductor Sir Henry Chapman (Alan Napier), may believe she loves the man of such talent, but it is a pure and prim kind of love by which composer Bone is not aroused...if he is ever by women aroused. He treats her more like a loving sister, admitting his most personal of problems including the fact that even he believes that something is wrong with him, having suffered throughout much of his life by moments of blackout but which has suddenly, as the film opens, stealing an entire day from his life as he returns home without remembering anything that has happened.

 

     We see what has happened, as he stabs a Jewish shop owner of fine art curios. In a clearly anti-Semitic slur, the doctor-detective Dr. Allan Middleton (Sanders) who Bone consults—when after reading in the newspaper of the shop owner’s murder, he fears he may somehow in involved—absolves him of the crime suggesting the victim had been cheating his customers, hinting that he somehow deserved being murdered. Yet despite the fact we have seen Bone plunge the knife into the victim’s chest, Middleton finds no trace of blood on the weapon nor can he match the blood on the composer’s coat with that of the shopkeeper’s. Nonetheless, he still suspects him, and even has Bone followed.

        Upon his second near-blackout, when he discovers Netta has been lying to him about her activities, the composer unsuccessfully attempts to strangle Barbara, who still does not suspect her friend, would-be lover.

      But by his third blackout, when after discovering that Netta is about to marry Carstairs, he kills her, placing her body at the top of a pyre set up in celebration of Guy Fawkes Night,*** although police still have no evidence, Middleton finally puts together the facts and prepares to arrest the murderer, who escapes to finally perform his completed concerto with Barbara in attendance and her father conducting.

      Finally, trapped by the police, Bone sets fire to the place, and realizing his own monstrosity, plays the remainder of his concerto until he is burned alive, Middleton commenting to Barbara, not so very differently from his statement about the Jewish shopkeeper, “It’s better this way.” Bernard Herrmann’s own “Concerto,” accordingly becomes to true unspoken hero of this work, surviving its fictional composer and outshining all the film’s characters in its splendiferous sounds.

      I wonder what Cregar might have thought about his performance if he had seen it. Certainly it’s a tour de force, among the best of noir incarnations of the often unintentional evil that propels such plots. One wonders, however, whether he would have seen an actor in himself able to take on leading man, romantic roles. I fear not. And, most terrifyingly, you can almost hear Zanuck or some other studio exec saying the cruel words they actually had wanted Sanders to speak, but which he absolutely refused to utter: “He’s better off this way.”

 

*As any reader has surely realized by this time, I am fascinated by unlinked connections and coincidence. Raymond Burr was also obsessed by his weight, particularly early on in his career. As he revealed in a 1993 interview in the Toronto Star: "I was just a fat heavy. I split the heavy parts with Bill Conrad. We were both in our twenties playing much older men. I never got the girl but I once got the gorilla in a 3-D picture called Gorilla at Large. I menaced Claudette Colbert, Lizabeth Scott, Paulette Goddard, Anne Baxter, Barbara Stanwyck. Those girls would take one look at me and scream and can you blame them? I was drowned, beaten, stabbed and all for my art. But I knew I was horribly overweight. I lacked any kind of self-esteem. At 25 I was playing the fathers of people older than me."

 

**In another interesting but somewhat unrelated coincidence, after Netta Longdon’s murder, we see the poster of her play Gay Love begin plastered over with another announcing a performance by French dancer/actor Gaby Deslys, an historically real performer interviewed by Djuna Barnes in April 1914. If Netta is clearly a woman who has used the admiration of a gay man to benefit her career, Deslys was known for her absolute “deviltry,” rumored to have stolen Jean Cocteau’s heart (he wrote a prose poem about her) and infatuated Sir James M. Barrie, the Scottish creator of Peter Pan (he wrote an entertainment for her, Rosy Rapture). In her interview, Barnes claims to steal away her reputation for that deviltry, revealing her to be simply an exhausted young doll-like girl—precisely the kind of woman Barnes herself loved. One has to wonder whether set decorator Thomas Little, who designed some 504 film sets over his career, including for Laura and All About Eve, was subliminally telling us something that even director John Brahm didn’t know.

 

***Finally, it is perhaps worth nothing that it is on Guy Fawkes Night that director Ken Russell choses for his Oscar Wilde character to attend the last (and only) performance he saw of his play Salomé in Salome’s Last Dance (1988), during which of course a great deal of sexual activity occurs.

 

Los Angeles, January 23, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (January 2022).

 

Don Roy King | Austin Brings His Roommate Home from College / 2008 [TV (SNL) episode]

any friend of mine is a friend of my dad’s

by Douglas Messerli

 

Seth Meyers, Doug Abeles, James Anderson, and Alex Blaze (head writers), Don Roy King (director) Austin Brings His Roommate Home from College / 2008 [4.45 minutes] [TV (SNL) episode]

 

The only rule that the Vogelcheck family has for the roommate Kevin (Andy Samberg) that their son Austin (Paul Rudd) has just brought home for the weekend is “Be yourself,” something given the Vogelcheck traditions is almost impossible to be given their penchant for their over-the-top expressions of physical love.

 

    Originally, it’s not very surprising that Austin’s mother kisses her son several times, or even when she brings up the fact that Austin might have a girlfriend, his own father plants several kisses on his son’s cheeks, forehead, and lips. One might attribute this simply to the good and friendly relationship between parents and son that Austin mentions to his roommate just as he arrives.

     But his father’s equal expression of affection for his advice for his son to concentrate on his studies at Miami University (a noted university in Oxford, Ohio, incidentally, not in Florida) might naturally confuse anyone, and certainly does appear a bit strange to his onlooking dorm companion.

     The fact that Austin’s brother (Bill Hader) comes to the table with some rather deep mouth to mouth kisses with Austin, and then turns back to his parents to award them similar kisses does rather disturb Kevin, who like most of us has never experienced such a loving family.

      But if this family is truly focused on one another’s faces, there are rather disconnected with basic conversational skills. When Austin’s father finds out that his son’s roommate is from Montclair, he asks “Do you know Mary Steenburgen?” Wondering if she might too be from his hometown, he’s told that she’s simply the father’s (Fred Armisen) favorite actress, a No. 10.

     Linguistic connections are apparently not this family’s forté. Kissing is their major focus and activity. And when his wife (Kristen Wig) to ask if he was talking about her, he puts his lips to her eye, evidently turning her “focus” to the wet saliva of a kiss. Dad’s also appreciative of his hard-working son Dwayne (Hader), who share an entire series of praiseworthy smackers, back and forth, for several moments.

      Asked about his college experiences, Austin mentions that he and his friends all get sleeping bags and stay over night on the floor—the dream of any young gay man in search of a sexual outing. Kevin decides that it’s time to call his folks.

      As he does in many such episodes, the father intercedes, realizing that the natural family affection of Vogelchecks has made the visitor uncomfortable. “That’s just how we are. We’re Vogelchecks. Again, he trots out his immigrant past, the story first Vogelcheck coming to the country with nothing, “totally naked,” looking to make a better life for himself.

      Kevin realizes that he shouldn’t judge people until he knows their whole story, and a moment later, in apology, he’s in a full deep mouth French kiss with his friend’s father, which, after a fairly long amount of chomping on each other’s molars, he declares “Wasn’t so bad.”

 

Los Angeles, June 3, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (June 2024).

     

Don Roy King and Danielle Kasen | Austin Brings His Girlfriend Home for Christmas / 2010 [TV (SNL) episode]

a brotherly christmas kiss

by Douglas Messerli

 

Doug Abeles and James Anderson (head writers), Don Roy King and Danielle Kasen (directors) Austin Brings His Girlfriend Home for Christmas / 2010 [5.14 minutes] [TV (SNL) episode]

 

In the ongoing episodes of the noted Vogelcheck “kissing family,” on December 11, 2010 Austin (Paul Rudd) brings home his girlfriend (Vanessa Bayer) for the Christmas holidays. As we have long ago discovered, the Vogelchecks are totally engaged in friendly, extended family intense mouth to mouth, French kisses; but here they go even a little bit further, not only playing with tongues as do Mr. and Mrs. Vogelcheck (Fred Armisen and Kristen Wig), but in the case of Austin and his brother Dwayne (Bill Hader) going much further with not only a long and intense kiss, but a rub up of the chest and pectorals. At other moments the Vogelchecks fondle breasts and when Santa, pretending to have problems with his car, arrives to make a telephone call, Mrs. Vogelsheck even partakes in the tradition of grabbing his balls (which in the spirit of Christmas, make them tingle like Christmas bells).

      The Vogelchecks’ Romanian grandparents almost engage in public sex, and at one point, when Austin asks for gum, they gladly exchange it from mouth to mouth, from mother to father and on to brother before depositing into Austin’s mouth. Austin’s girlfriend, when asked, claims she doesn’t like gum.

      By the time she’s met the entire family, in fact, she’s ready to leave, suddenly remembering that her own family might be missing her. But Papa Vogelcheck pauses to explain how the Romanian Vogelchecks daily kisses got them through the tough years of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Communist rule and “the justified stoning of their daughter, Luschka.” Inevitably Austin’s new girlfriend forgives them or perhaps I should say, joins them in their traditional Holiday celebrations. After all, the stranger Santa has left them even more presents than usual, as they happily engage in further family acts of incestuous kisses and inappropriate hugs.

     Never has TV gotten away with more intense homosexual kisses than in this series.

 

Los Angeles, June 3, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2024).

Jean Renoir | Le Fleuvre (The River ) / 1951

the end begins

by Douglas Messerli

 

Rumer Goden and Jean Renoir (screenplay, based on the fiction by Rumer Godden), Jean Renoir (director) Le Fleuvre (The River ) / 1951

 

In many ways, Renoir’s great film The River behaves somewhat like a traditional film. There is a plot, for example—borrowed from Rumer Godden’s fiction of the same name—centered around a happy Anglo-Indian family, immersed in Indian life and religion. Renoir portrays that world, in beautiful color, as almost a kind of Edenic life shared by the father (Esmond Knight), the head of a Jute company, and the mother (Nora Swinburne) overseeing five daughters and a young son, along with a nanny and other servants. This Eden not only encompasses their beautiful house and yard, but extends to the village around them and particularly The Ganges, the holy river around which most of the local activity is based. Both this family and their neighbor’s lives are highly involved with the Hindu traditions surrounding them.

 

    Into this Eden comes a kind of Adam and Eve in the forms of Mr. John’s (Arthur Shields) daughter, Melanie (Radha), who looks like her Indian mother, and the neighbor’s cousin, Captain John (Thomas E. Breen), an American soldier who has lost his leg in battle. With their appearance the young girls of house next door now have a romantic model in Melanie and a focus for their coming-of-age fantasies in the handsome Captain. In particular, the gangly Harriet (Patricia Walters) and her more mature friend Valerie (Adrienne Corri) vie for the attentions of the listless Captain, while Melanie becomes torn between her distant relative and a local Indian boy.

     We observe these interrelationships, as well as become educated in the local customs and community traditions, through the eyes of Harriet, who wants to be a writer and shares her aspirations and romantic achievements with the Captain. But it is the red-headed Valerie who most attracts the Captain’s eye, as the two play out flirtations that she is not ready to act on, and which, in turn, painfully hurt Harriet, particularly when she observes them kissing—a kiss, she imagines, that might have been hers.

     Both Mother and Nanny wisely watch over these teenage fixations, knowing all too well that they are necessary for maturation. When Harriet’s young brother, however, becomes attracted to the movements of a nearby cobra, eventually being killed by its bite, these minor melodramas turn into tragedy, as Harriet, who knew of cobra’s existence, having suffering the rejection by the Captain is now faced with the guilt of her brother’s death. Attempting to put an end to her life, she takes out a skiff into the dark night currents. Fortunately, she is observed by Indian boaters, who follow and save her, the Captain returning her home.

     Although they have lost their son, the family soon can rejoice with the birth of a new child—another daughter! And so, the end begins anew. Life is renewed for the entire family and community, just as it is expressed in Hindu thought.

     Yet, for all this “story,” Renoir’s film is not so much a tale of the family as it is a kind of panoramic documentary of Indian life. By far, the greatest number of images are not focused on the purposely amateurish cast and their quiet joys and sorrows as it is on the market place, the jute factory, the holy shrines, and, most importantly, the river and river life.    

     Filmmaker Satyajit Ray, who worked with Renoir on this film, criticized The River as being too centered upon its Anglo figures; but I would argue that the story, lovely as it is, hardly matters alongside of Renoir’s engagement with Indian culture and landscape. A kite, images of Kali, Indian dances, piles of jute, heaps of vegetables, capons, cobras, small containers of oil, bowls of milk, and the bronzed bodies of Indians matter far more in this movie than do the comings and goings of the Anglo family and friends. The colors of this landscape are one of the central focuses of the film: the reds of the rivers, the greens, blues, yellows, and white of toys, dresses, and floor paintings are the true subject of Renoir’s meditation.

 

    As critics have noted, Renoir was personally affected by his Indian sojourn, he himself admitting that he could talk endlessly about his year-long experiences there.  Clearly The River is different from almost every film he previously made. The high wit and social commentary of a work such as Rules of the Game is completely missing in this gentle document. Forward action has been transformed into repeated gestures of survival. Harriet cries out to her mother after her brother’s death: "How can you carry on as if nothing had happened?" To which her Mother replies: “We don't. We just carry on."

     So too does Renoir back away from human evaluation, focusing instead on the simple rhythms of life. Bodily movement and dance are also at the heart of The River. While Renoir’s Indian characters are almost always in motion, gracefully carrying their burdens upon their heads, steering their boats into port, joyfully swimming, mesmerizing a snake, celebrating the marriage ceremony in traditional movements, using their hands and feet to say hello or goodbye, Renoir’s Anglo folk are gangly and clumsy: they spend much of their afternoons flat on their backs, asleep on the lawn; the one-legged captain can hardly dance and loses his balance; the child, imitating the snake-charmer, is destroyed. If Renoir has kept the plot of Godden’s Anglo story, he has made a film that is thoroughly Indian in its rhythms and hues.

 

Los Angeles, March 17, 2012

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2012).