La fille de l'eau

To try to find some of the seeds which produced Renoir's masterpieces of the thirties is splitting hairs.All we can say is that it shows Renoir's taste for nature ,rivers,country landscapes.

The heroine called Gudule (the name has become completely ludicrous in today's France ;no one is called Gudule anymore)is played by Renoir's favorite actress of the silent era ,Catherine Hessling.Her fate is worthy of Hugo's "les miserables" :mistreated by a wicked lecherous uncle ,taken in by a poacher and his mum, left in the cold and the rain...And finally she finds love :a nice young man falls for her and marries her.His background is very bourgeois ,but the parents do not seem to bother.That is to say we are far from "Boudu Sauvé des Eaux" ,"La Chienne" and even "Une Partie de Campagne" .

Best moment: the heroine's nightmare;people who know well Renoir's silent era will notice the similarities between this sequence and that of "La Petite Fille aux Allumettes" where the little match girl and her attentive escort go for a horse ride in the sky.The comparison stops here for " La Fille de l'Eau' is inferior to the Andersen adaptation.

Actually the main influence is DW Griffith but then again Hessling is not

Lilian Gish.

For Renoir's fans.The others might find it a bit obsolete.

This will mostly seem outdated now. A silent melodrama about a young destitute girl in the French countryside trapped between men who desire her, and on the other hand by her efforts to comply or reciprocate. Various bargains that have to do with money as the more or less thinly veiled metaphor for sex.

But there is a dream sequence here that, as so often with these silent dreams, I urge you to see. It's about the girl transmuting in her feverish mind these barely comprehensible forces that threaten the virgin soul into images that will make sense; so an imaginative flight, a sensual, delirius game of hide-and-seek where the coarse, violent men haunt her down, where a piece of rope transforms into the snake of mischievous desire, a point-of-view rushing towards a door and the light outside, and finally the man who can protect her shown, quite literally, as a champion on his white horse galloping across the skies.

The overwhelming experience is so perfectly about the distorted imprint of the world. This should be seen next to the best moments in Epstein. There is shadow here cast by the eye in motion, emotional or otherwise.

Another note that intrigues, a blemish in the perfect picture of her well-to-do benefactor. His parents are shown at one point hastily leaving for Algiers on account of business; what was probably meant innocently at the time, now can only leave us wondering at his source of wealth.

This is the first film Renoir directed alone and it is by far his best silent film, of the ones I have seen (Whirlpool of Fate, Nana, Charleston Parade and The Little Match Girl).

The editing was just amazing. The quick cuts where so spot on and well paced. And the trick shots where like something from a poetic avant garde film. There was also a very nice close up of eyes, which reminded me of the Spaghetti Westerns.

The story is not bad. Reminded me a little of D.W. Griffith mellow drama. The acting is also not too bad but the strength of this film is first and foremost its visual aspect, something sadly lacking in his other silent films I have seen.

A complex and sympathetic narrative about a young woman that begins with her working on a river barge with her father and her uncle and follows her through difficult circumstances after her father dies, exploited but resourceful, even using petty crime, particularly in the company of a scampish boy. There's something Pickfordesque about Catherine Hessling (who became Mme. Renoir), and a touch of D. W. Griffith in her occasional hanky-winding, but Renoir is not as sentimental. There's a dream sequence as good as Hitchcock decades later, night scenes (a haystack on fire), and observations about the ways of the well-born that are a start on the way to La Règle du jeu.

Jean Renoir's first film, WHIRLPOOL OF FATE, was made when he was 30 years old and starred his first wife Catherine Hessling (who had modeled for his father Pierre-Auguste Renoir). Essentially a melodrama in the style of D. W. Griffith, it concerns the plight of a young woman who works on a canal barge with her father and uncle. After the father dies in a work related accident, she escapes from her drunken, lecherous uncle and winds up with a group of gypsies who take care of her. She meets a young thief there and after many trials and tribulations, she marries the son of a middle class family and it all works out.

Although the story is clearly indebted to Griffith, the visuals are Renoir's own. WHIRLPOOL contains scenes that would be recast in later movies such as F. W. Murnau's SUNRISE (1927) and Jean Vigo's L'ATALANTE (1934). The highlight is a dream sequence which is worthy of Hitchcock. Hessling, wearing stark monochromatic make-up, gives a respectable silent film performance as the hapless orphan who goes from one mishap to another. The male performers acquit themselves well in what are essentially one-dimensional characters who are strictly plot motivated.

This new Kino Lorber Blu-Ray is a nice upgrade from the old 2007 Lionsgate DVD release. The picture has undergone a 4K restoration effort which helps to clear up some of the contrast issues especially in the night scenes and gives a sharper image throughout. The original concertina score by Marc Perrone has been replaced with one by Antonio Coppola. It is more user friendly in that it offers more variety but I prefer the original which enhances the bleakness of the story. The Blu-Ray comes with an audio commentary by critic Nick Pinkerton that provides background on Renoir and the film...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.