Le Fleuve (The River)

1951, Jean Renoir, France/ India/ USA, 99 min, English
With: Nora Swinburne, Esmond Knight, Arthur Shields
Introduced by Pulitzer-Prize winning poetVijay Seshadri
A group of teenage girls in British India all fall in love with the same older man, but when he begins to develop feelings for one of them, the waters get choppy…
Clemente on Le Fleuve: “My biography includes India in a very vital way. I would not be who I am without India, and there are very few films shot in India that have the level of abstraction that I demand from any expression…and I find it unforgiveable to look at India in a sentimental way. You have to be much more impassive and much more compassionate than that. And this film is just great form.”