THE RIVER
T. it.: Il fiume; Sog.: dal romanzo omonimo di Rumer Godden; Scen.: Jean Renoir, Rumer Godden; F.: Claude Renoir; Op.: Ramanda Sen Gupta; M.: George Gale; Scgf.: Eugène Lourié, Bansi Chandragupta; Mu.: musiche tradizionali indù, M.A. Partha Sarathy, Schumann, Mozart; Su.: Charles Poulton, Charles Knott; Ass. R.: Forrest Judd, Hari S. Das Gupta, Sukhamoy Sen, Bansi Ashe; Int.: Nora Swinburne (la madre); Esmond Knight (il padre); Patricia Walters (Harriet); Radha Sri Ram (Melanie); Adrienne Corri (Valerie); Thomas E. Breen (il capitano John); Richard R. Foster (Bogey); Arthur Shields (Mr. John); Suprova Mukerjee (Nan); Penelope Wilkinson (Elizabeth); Jane Harris (Muffie); Cecilia Wood (Victoria) Jennifer Harris (Mouse); Nimai Barik (Kanu); Trilak Jetley (Anil); Voce narrante: June Hillman; Prod.: Kenneth McEldowney, Oriental International Films, Theatre Guild, Cie Renoir – Jean Renoir 35mm. L.: 2710 m. D.: 99’. Col.
Film Notes
4 December 1971
I have recently seen The River again. The screening confirmed an idea that I already had during the shooting: I thought that the Hindus, and especially those unfortunates that die of hunger in the middle of the road, were conquering the world. The characters of The River believe in work. They believe in the virtues that determined the success of the Victorian age. Rumer Godden’s story was not about the Hindu’s condition: what the two of us recounted in the script of The River was the story of an English family, a symbol of a situation that, if historians still exist in the future, will be catalogued as the end of an era. Perhaps the audience will sense that the fishermen on the riverboats, the coolies that animate the factories with their incessant hurrying, the crowds that fill the markets and the men of all social castes that doze on the temple steps, are unknowingly the cause of the collapse of the world built by western technology.
Jean Renoir, Écran, janvier 1972