All right, I saw Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion (1937), and liked it. I saw The Rules of the Game (1939), and liked it. So I was looking forward to The River (1951):
What a massive disappointment! I gave up after about half an hour. I can't remember the last time I gave up on a film so quickly. I guess maybe when it was first released, four years after India's independence, it gave Western audiences a nostalgic romanticized view of a recent colonial past, in pretty technicolor, that may have had a certain appeal. But the dialogue is clichéd, the acting wooden, and the whole scenario pretty cringe-inducing. If I have an hour and a half spare, I'd rather spend it looking at something that Jean Renoir's father cooked up seventy years earlier, in 1881:
...for more on the "Luncheon of the Boating Party," click here.
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