The River (1951) on Netflix
Harriet, a teenager, lives with her family beside the Ganges in British India. When her neighbor's cousin, Captain John, comes to stay, she and her friend Valerie take an interest in him.
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Trailer
Plot summary
Harriet is a teenage English girl growing up in British India, the eldest of several children in a genteel household on the banks of the Ganges, where her father manages a jute mill. Indian staff, among them her nanny Nan, keep the family running. The routine of her days changes when Mr. John, the family's Irish neighbor, invites his younger cousin, Captain John, to stay. The American has lost a leg in a war and wears a prosthetic. Harriet, her sisters and her older friend Valerie are all taken with him, and he joins them for Diwali. Harriet finds the nerve to show him her private diary, and he reads her poems with admiration. Melanie, Mr. John's daughter, whose Indian mother has died, is also drawn to the visitor.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The River (1951)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Producer J. Kenneth McEldowney accepted a dare from his wife, an MGM publicist, to make a better film after criticizing an MGM movie. He sold their home and his chain of florist shops and financed The River independently between 1947 and 1951.
- Jean Renoir cast Thomas E. Breen, a United States Marine Corps veteran who lost his right leg fighting on Guam in 1944, as Captain John, without knowing Breen was the son of Joseph Breen, the head of the American film censor board.
- Wes Anderson credited The River, along with Satyajit Ray's films and Louis Malle's India documentaries, with inspiring him to make a film in India, which became The Darjeeling Limited in 2007.
- Satyajit Ray, then working in advertising, met Jean Renoir during the making of The River and the two became close. On the same shoot Ray met production assistant Subrata Mitra, who later became the cinematographer on several of Ray's own films.
- Because The River was shot in Technicolor, the footage could not be reviewed in color until it came back from the lab five months later, so everything had to be done right the first time.
- Publicity by McEldowney's wife in magazines such as Life and the Saturday Evening Post helped the film to a record 34-week run in New York. Having succeeded as a producer, McEldowney returned to real estate and never made another motion picture.
