There is hardly a novel in the English language which offers more difficulties to the movie producer than "The River," Rumer Godden's beautiful and deeply sensitive story of a girl's adolescence in India. Adolescence is rocky stuff for the movies anyway--it is all inside while the camera is necessarily outside. And in the case of "The River," the exotic background might well be a distraction.

But Jean Renoir, a man of great courage and greater art, has achieved the difficult goal he set for himself. He has produced a beautiful version of "The River" that does justice to the original novel. All the excitement of India (the Ganges River and its banks in this case) is laid before us with magnificent color photography--not like a wooden travelogue but as life, flowing like the river. Likewise we are shown the tense and wonderful and painful world of the adolescent daughter of a jute mill supervisor and two of her friends, all three of whom fall in love with a visiting American. In catching the aching mood of this adolescent world, Renoir is aided by the excellent performances of Patricia Walters (the heroine, the "I" of the novel), Adrienne Corri (the beautiful girl who scores for a time over the plain girl--who, thank Renoir, is in fact plain), and Radha (the half-caste). But essentially this is a director's and not an actor's picture, and most oaf the credit must go to Renoir.

A beautiful and exciting picture, then. But I cannot rid myself of a feeling that it is not a great picture by several Ganges-breadths. Why it misses greatness is difficult to say, but perhaps it lies in this: the force, the beauty of the novel lies in the deep contrast between the calm flow of Indian life outside and the turbulent rapids inside the adolescent girl. Without this contrast the background is superfluous, even distracting, and the girl's problems are deprived of a setting which gives them power. Renoir certainly does not miss this contrast, but I do not feel that he has caught the full force of it. His India struggles to escape the bonds of the story and become a travelogue; his adolescents often seem remote from the local color through which they move. The nuances of the connection between character and background are not all caught--as they were in the production a few years ago of "Black Narcissus," the other of Miss Godden's novels to be filmed.

Partisans of the movie are free to dismiss this as carping, especially since I am a male reviewing what is undoubtedly a very feminine picture. "The River," a study of adolescent girls written by a sensitive woman novelist, seems to hang together better for those who can identify more closely with the protagonists. I have a feeling that more women than men will consider "The River" a truly great picture.

No man, however, will carp about the beauty of Renoir's production. From the very introduction of the credits at the beginning he shows perfect taste. The color photography is excellent; the musical background is oriental and exciting without sounding like Hollywood Baghdad-music; a thousand details contribute to the dominant impression of beauty. For this alone one should sell one's patrimony for a reserved seat at the Beacon Hill. --John R. W. Small '51