Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword to the Second Edition
- Preface to the First Edition
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on the Essays
- The “I” of the camera
- 1 Hollywood Reconsidered: Reflections on the Classical American Cinema
- 2 D. W. Griffith and the Birth of the Movies
- 3 Judith of Bethulia
- 4 True Heart Griffith
- 5 The Ending of City Lights
- 6 The Goddess: Reflections on Melodrama East and West
- 7 Red Dust: The Erotic Screen Image
- 8 Virtue and Villainy in the Face of the Camera
- 9 Pathos and Transfiguration in the Face of the Camera: A Reading of Stella Dallas
- 10 Viewing the World in Black and White: Race and the Melodrama of the Unknown Woman
- 11 Howard Hawks and Bringing Up Baby
- 12 The Filmmaker in the Film: Octave and the Rules of Renoir's Game
- 13 Stagecoach and the Quest for Selfhood
- 14 To Have and Have Not Adapted a Film from a Novel
- 15 Hollywood and the Rise of Suburbia
- 16 Nobody's Perfect: Billy Wilder and the Postwar American Cinema
- 17 The River
- 18 Vertigo: The Unknown Woman in Hitchcock
- 19 North by Northwest: Hitchcock's Monument to the Hitchcock Film
- 20 The Villain in Hitchcock: “Does He Look Like a ‘Wrong One’ to You?”
- 21 Thoughts on Hitchcock's Authorship
- 22 Eternal Véritées: Cinema-Vérité and Classical Cinema
- 23 Visconti's Death in Venice
- 24 Alfred Guzzetti's Family Portrait Sittings
- 25 The Taste for Beauty: Eric Rohmer's Writings on Film
- 26 Tale of Winter: Philosophical Thought in the Films of Eric Rohmer
- 27 The “New Latin American Cinema”
- 28 Violence and Film
- 29 What Is American about American Film Study?
- Index
17 - The River
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword to the Second Edition
- Preface to the First Edition
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on the Essays
- The “I” of the camera
- 1 Hollywood Reconsidered: Reflections on the Classical American Cinema
- 2 D. W. Griffith and the Birth of the Movies
- 3 Judith of Bethulia
- 4 True Heart Griffith
- 5 The Ending of City Lights
- 6 The Goddess: Reflections on Melodrama East and West
- 7 Red Dust: The Erotic Screen Image
- 8 Virtue and Villainy in the Face of the Camera
- 9 Pathos and Transfiguration in the Face of the Camera: A Reading of Stella Dallas
- 10 Viewing the World in Black and White: Race and the Melodrama of the Unknown Woman
- 11 Howard Hawks and Bringing Up Baby
- 12 The Filmmaker in the Film: Octave and the Rules of Renoir's Game
- 13 Stagecoach and the Quest for Selfhood
- 14 To Have and Have Not Adapted a Film from a Novel
- 15 Hollywood and the Rise of Suburbia
- 16 Nobody's Perfect: Billy Wilder and the Postwar American Cinema
- 17 The River
- 18 Vertigo: The Unknown Woman in Hitchcock
- 19 North by Northwest: Hitchcock's Monument to the Hitchcock Film
- 20 The Villain in Hitchcock: “Does He Look Like a ‘Wrong One’ to You?”
- 21 Thoughts on Hitchcock's Authorship
- 22 Eternal Véritées: Cinema-Vérité and Classical Cinema
- 23 Visconti's Death in Venice
- 24 Alfred Guzzetti's Family Portrait Sittings
- 25 The Taste for Beauty: Eric Rohmer's Writings on Film
- 26 Tale of Winter: Philosophical Thought in the Films of Eric Rohmer
- 27 The “New Latin American Cinema”
- 28 Violence and Film
- 29 What Is American about American Film Study?
- Index
Summary
God dwells in the heart of all beings, Arjuna; thy God dwells in thy heart. And his power of wonder moves all things – puppets in a play of shadows – whirling them onwards in the stream of time.
– Krishna, in The Bhagavad GitaHands lovingly paint intricate filigrees on the ground. A sitar plays the serene opening strains of a raga as the narrator, a mature English woman whose voice is wise and comforting, begins to speak: “In India, to honor guests on special occasions, women decorate the floors of their homes with rice flour and water. With this … we welcome you to this motion picture, filmed entirely in India, in Bengal, where the story really happened.”
Thus, The River (1951), the film that inaugurates the second great period of Jean Renoir's career, presents the first of its interpretations of itself, its own views, its creation, and its audience: The film is a beautiful design painted by loving hands to welcome us as honored guests on a special occasion. (It is a magical moment when, at the midpoint of the film, this opening image is reprised on the occasion of a wedding – a wedding that is the centerpiece of the film-within-the-film that represents a story told by the narrator's past self.)
The narrator goes on: “It is a story of my first love, about growing up on the banks of a wide river.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The 'I' of the CameraEssays in Film Criticism, History, and Aesthetics, pp. 206 - 220Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003