The River has the power to reveal the extent to which other Western films about Southeast Asia will rely on Orientalist tropes about poverty, spirituality, and naturalism. Whether out of a fear of reproducing visual stereotypes or from a keen awareness that he has a lot to learn about India, Jean Renoir decided to adopt a documentary-like approach to produce a film version of Rumer Godden’s novel. Renoir’s approach fills The River with vignettes of everyday life on the banks of the Bengal river. These vignettes, narrated by Harriet, an English girl, contain no fetishes of magical spirituality, which is what Western audiences will so often see as markers of India’s difference from the so-called rational West. Instead, the descriptions of Hindu customs are restrained, almost dry, as if they are designed to point to the universality of how ordinary people everywhere use religious or cultural traditions to deal with life and death. Outside of Harriet’s narration, the English family passes no judgement about Hinduism or Indian customs; nothing about the culture around them is odd, or curious, or silly in comparison to a European standard. The neighbor’s guest from America, Captain John, is full of stereotyped curiosity when he arrives; during his stay in India, he wants to see charmers, rope-climbers and beds of nails. His host and cousin, Mr. John, deflates this curiosity by saying with some sarcasm that cannot show the West’s version of India to Captain John because he “is a bad host.” This tongue-in-cheek apology also tells the film’s audience that one should expect to be disappointed if they came to this film believing certain things to be true.
Like Black Narcissus, The River will sometimes flirt with Orientalism simply because its protagonists are British colonists in India. Yet so much of The River shows how Renoir was trying to prevent a colonial gaze from overloading the film with interpretations of otherness. The enables us to appreciate The River as more than just a old piece of history in the global evolution of cinema. In addition to its beautiful images in technicolor or the fact that during production Renoir met Satyajit Ray, who had yet to create The Apu Trilogy, The River holds its place among other films that speak about the transience of love and youth.
notes on cinema 