#suprova mukerjee

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The River (1951) Jean Renoir

March 16th 2024

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The River (Jean Renoir, 1951).

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The River (1951)

Director - Jean Renoir, Cinematography - Claude Renoir

"This... being together... in the garden. All of us happy, and you with us here, I didn't want it to change... and it's changed. I didn't want it to end... and it's gone. It was like something in a dream. Now you've made it real. I didn't want to be real."

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The River (Jean Renoir, 1951)

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Film: The River (1951) Language: English/Bengali Director: Jean Renoir Producer: Kenneth McEldowney Writer: Rumer Godden Screenplay: Jean Renoir Narrator: June Hillman Cast: Nora Swinburne, Esmond Knight, Arthur Shields, Suprova Mukerjee, Radha Burnier Music: M. A. Partha Sarathy Cinematography: Claude Renoir Editor: Claude Renoir Distributor: United Artists

Description: The River (French: Le Fleuve) is a 1951 film directed by Jean Renoir. It was filmed in India. It is a coming of age film. A fairly faithful dramatization of an earlier literary work of the same name (The River, authored by Rumer Godden), the movie attests to a teenager's coming of age and first love, and how her heart is broken when the man she falls in love with is smitten with her best friend instead. Harriet (Patricia Walters) belongs to an upper middle-class English family residing on the banks of the Ganges River in India. Her father (Esmond Knight) runs a jute mill, and she has four sisters. Her only brother (Richard R. Foster), somewhat ten years her junior, wants to learn how to tame cobras with a flute. Although they are raised in a genteel, English setting, and even have the benefit of a live-in nanny, their upbringings bear the mark of a curious confluence of Western and Eastern philosophies. If there ever could be a compromise between Christianity and Hinduism, they are immersed in it. (The youngest girl, for instance, has a rabbit she treats as her newborn baby, and says that some babies can be born again and again.) The tranquility of an upperclass English family lifestyle, however, takes a tumble and turns thoroughly topsy turvy when the family's neighbor invites his cousin, Captain John (Thomas E. Breen), to live with him on his plantation. When Captain John arrives, the girls discover he has lost one leg in the war. Notwithstanding his handicap, he has such an atmosphere of charm and sophistication about him that the daughters are all understandably smitten with him and therefore invite him to a Diwali celebration, complete with a formal invitation in writing, hand-delivered by the oldest daughter herself.