Desperately Seeking Radha:Renoir's The River and Its Reincarnation
Jean Renoir's The River, based on Rumer Godden's novel by the same title, was the first Technicolor film made in India. This article traces the evolution of the project from Godden's novel, through an earlier draft entitled Big River, to the final film version. This development suggests that the late inclusion of the Indian Barata Natyam dancer Rhada Sri Ram dramatically changed the final film version, particularly in terms of the cultural content. Her role prompted major revisions in the script and facilitated a shift away from an earlier colonialist perspective towards the acknowledgement of India as a place independent of the West. Renoir was so taken with Radha that he planned to make another film with her. In an examination of a previously unknown draft scenario for a second film in India, this essay concludes with a speculation as to why Renoir failed in his attempt to "reincarnate" both Radha and India in another film.
Outside of beauty or talent there are unknown reasons which make a man or a woman fit with the camera; I call them "screen animals" and I more and more believe that Radha is a screen animal.
Jean Renoir to Prince Fateh Singh, February 27, 1951
I believe that we have known each other in many lives.
Radha Sri Ram to Jean and Dido Renoir, September 19, 19501
Jean Renoir's The River of 1951 was for him first and foremost a welcomed escape from Hollywood after nine years of struggle with an industry that he felt did not understand him. As the formidable Darryl Zanuck remarked after working with him on Swamp Water: "Renoir . . . has a lot of talent, but he's not one of us."2 Even when Renoir tried to make a film suited to Hollywood's noir craze, it fell flat. The Woman on the Beach of 1947 was a deeply frustrating experience for him, and in spite of substantial re-editing, it was a commercial failure.3 To get rid of him, RKO bought out his contract and this ended Renoir's Hollywood career.
Virtually unemployed, he tried without success to peddle to industry producers the idea of a film in India based on Rumer Godden's novel of her colonial childhood in Bengal. He later blamed the lack of interest on the fact that the project was not "loaded with elephants, tigers, Bengal lancers with fancy turbans,"4 and was out of line with typical exotic Hollywood films about India. Then came the fortuitous encounter with aspiring producer and millionaire florist Kenneth McEldowney, who was also interested in Godden's short novel.5 Innumerable trials and tribulations, both personal and technical, awaited Renoir on the road to completing this masterpiece. McEldowney proved a less than honest producer,6 but in spite of these many frustrations, which also included almost insurmountable technical challenges involved in making the first Technicolor film in India, Renoir preferred this collaboration to Hollywood, so much so that he originally planned to make three more films there with McEldowney.7 [End Page 103]
One of these projects, with the possible title of "Monsoon," was written in March 1951 before the release of The River. It reached the stage of a 27-page draft scenario, and was to star Radha Sri Ram, the accomplished classical Indian dancer and highly educated Brahmin and Theosophist, who played the role of the Anglo-Indian Melanie in The River. Her vital importance in giving The River its final shape is undeniable. Even Godden, who at times worried about the major changes to her novel, pronounced her Bharata Natyam dance "magnificent"8 when she saw the rushes with Carl Koch in London, and she considered it "the heart of the film."9 An earlier version of The River screenplay, entitled "Big River" and written by Renoir and Godden before the discovery of Radha, reveals just how much the final film version changed with her involvement. "Monsoon" was to have continued this fruitful collaboration between Renoir and Radha.
A parallel and more personal evolution shadows this one—the story of Renoir's fascination with Radha Sri Ram. Without her, he could not have made the film that he did. She brought authenticity, a greater integrity in handling the Indian aspect, a tremendous talent associated with women, and spectacle (which would play a large role in his later films). She represented a connection with India that he hoped to develop in future films, primarily by making her a star. The fact that he wrote the scenario for a second film in India while she visited him and his wife Dido in March 1951 speaks volumes on the importance of Radha in his plans. But, as I shall argue, what Renoir gained through her presence in the evolution of a more authentic view of India in The River, he seems to have lost again in this subsequent project.
Looking back on his experience in India, Renoir characterized it many times as a transformative moment. Even as early as 1949, after his preliminary visit, he wrote: "I didn't realize that I was going to find in India one of the greatest inspirations of my life."10 In the Theatre Guild program for The River, he entitled his comments: "Something Important Happened to Me." This personal account of the changes wrought by his years in Hollywood leading up to the making of The River emphasizes his need do something completely different in this film: "I had to find a new style which would fit with the new person I had become and with the new life I had found."11 Other comments by Renoir, as well as his unpublished correspondence, refer not only to a personal rejuvenation ("this work makes me 20 years younger"12), but also to a real fascination with India as a timeless place, often from a typical colonialist/orientalist perspective,13 and one capable of revitalizing a flagging Western spirit.14 [End Page 104]
Renoir has been roundly criticized for this approach. In an important article, "Whither the Colonial Question?," Nandi Bhatia takes him to task for ignoring the reality of the historical situation of the late 1940s, from the deplorable conditions of jute workers and Calcutta riots, to the massive casualties of partition. Among other things, she condemns Renoir for "reproduc[ing] the simplistic dichotomy of the mysterious and spiritual East versus the materialistic West,"15 and she casts the film as a "celebration of imperialism."16 For those more sympathetic to Renoir's evolution, this new phase, although not without its contradictions, can be viewed as the culmination of a major shift away from the preoccupations with class and political struggle in his thirties films to a broad, humanistic and universal perspective that eschews the ideological edge of earlier works.17
No doubt, Renoir's years in Hollywood changed his outlook. By the end of World War II, which he spent in the United States, he was tired and disconnected from his past.18 He also seemed to have recognized that future solutions lay elsewhere, and that understanding the world consisted now more of bringing the West into touch with a completely different set of values that might prove more fruitful to human development in a dangerous Cold-War era. However, he realized: "I had to see India through the eyes of a Westerner if I didn't want to make some horrible mistakes,"19 and he never denied the fact that The River was made for an American audience—one last attempt to win acclaim in Hollywood.20 Of course, this Western focus deeply disappointed Renoir's new protégé, Satyajit Ray, whom he mentored during the filming, and who later wrote of Renoir's presentation of his project to the Calcutta Film Society: "we were not to expect much in the way of authentic India in it. I could not help feeling that it was overdoing it a bit, coming all the way from California merely to get the topography right."21
Certainly it is possible to criticize The River as a colonialist product, with its colorful "native" traditions and its Western protagonists, but what is more interesting to my mind is just how far Renoir shifted in the development of the film from a predominantly post-war American perspective in the "Big River" draft to a final film version in which India has a much greater presence. As Ann Chisholm notes of Renoir's practices during the filming: "Because he was so open to the discovery of India, he was endlessly willing to change and adapt the script to include new scenes," even once filming began on The River, at times driving Godden to distraction.22 This flexibility proved critical in shaping the film overall, and particularly with regard to the Indian content. [End Page 105]
Relying primarily on unpublished correspondence between Renoir and Godden, Alexander Sesonske traces in great detail how the problematic selection of Tommy Breen for the part of Captain John necessitated significant changes to the screenplay.23 Choosing a young man for the role, as opposed to the more mature one in the novel, required a major reshaping of his character. Other changes were made to his part because an inexperienced actor was a liability in a setting in which rushes could not be seen for two weeks. Sesonske makes a compelling case, but I would argue that the late discovery of Radha Sri Ram for the role of Melanie did as much or more to shift the focus of the film. Without the character of Anglo-Indian Melanie, who did not exist in the novel, the story would have remained one of a family of the Raj, isolated in their garden. Furthermore, without the evolution of Melanie's role with the discovery of Radha, there would have been no "Bengal Story" of Lord Krishna and Lady Radha, and no dance. The documentary footage that Renoir made early in his stay and managed to incorporate late in the editing process would have been less effective. Questions of love would have retained a distinctly Western flavor, and Hindu mythology would have had little place. In short, judging from the "Big River" draft, the film might have come dangerously close to a Hollywood product.
In the final film version, with Rumer Godden's novel of her childhood spent in Bengal as his focus, and with Godden as his collaborator, Renoir chose to approach India in the experience of an adolescent British girl, Harriet, who is, like Godden in her youth, a budding writer, and whose family lives in India, he says, like a "plum on a peach tree."24 This deceptively simple story recounts the first love of three young girls for the wounded and demoralized war hero Captain John, who comes to stay with his widowed cousin Mr. John. Mr. John has immersed himself in India through a personal philosophy he calls "digestivism," and he lives in sparse Indian style with his Anglo-Indian daughter Melanie. She has just returned from a convent education and has decided to completely embrace her Indian heritage. Harriet, Melanie, and their neighbor Valerie, whose father owns the jute factory where Harriet's father works, all fall in love with the veteran. In the course of the film, Harriet's brother Bogey dies from a cobra bite, she attempts suicide in her guilt over her part in his death, Captain John departs revitalized, having accepted his condition as a one-legged man, and a new child, a sixth girl, is born into Harriet's family. There is an overwhelming presence of women in the film, both as creators and procreators, and at the very center of the movie lies the captivating "Bengal Story" of Lord Krishna and Lady Radha with its Bharata Natyam dance, imagined and narrated by the young Harriet to [End Page 106] woo Captain John. This frame narrative is inter-cut with documentary footage of life along the sacred and eternal Ganges, including daily activities, seasons, customs, and rituals. The film is organized by the strong presence of a guiding extra-diegetic voice-over of a mature Harriet, who relates not only the events of the story as a memory, but also the present-tense cultural information of the documentary sequences.
To fully appreciate the significance of Radha's role as Melanie/Lady Radha, it is necessary to chart the evolution of her inclusion in The River. In Godden's novel, there is no such Anglo-Indian character. Instead, a girl's first love is explored through the infatuation of Harriet, Harriet's sister Bea, and the jute mill owner's daughter Valerie. There is also no attempted suicide by Harriet, very little mention of Indian festivals, and Harriet's writing is purely Western—she has a short story published about Christmas. As Renoir remarked much later, it was a personal tale in the garden: "In Godden's novel . . . India penetrates the walls of the house, though you never go there. We decided to break down the walls."25
The "Big River" Draft
Godden and Renoir worked together to produce a first script entitled "Eastward in Eden" in the summer of 1949 following Renoir's first trip to India that spring. A subsequent undated version labeled "Draft 2—Big River"26 reflects their intent to add more Indian characters to the story.27 In late October 1949, with filming originally planned to begin in November (and actual filming only two months away), Harriet's sister Bea is still in the script. "Big River" represents a period prior to Renoir's encounter with Radha in December 194928 (when shooting was imminent), and is significantly different from the final film. In it, Harriet's parents are more grounded in their identity as colonials: they are concerned with the question of money from the jute company, the danger of the world for their girls, and their plans to send their daughter Bea to school in England. Harriet's father employs Mr. John, who works in a minor position in the jute mill and who sees himself as a failure in purely Western terms. He claims to find peace in his "air-cooled" office, "a first-rate American plan," and he drinks Coca-Cola. He lives alone with two daughters, by two different wives. One is Melanie, an Anglo-Indian, and the other is Valerie, whose mother was white. Valerie constantly demeans her half-sister through her racist remarks: "My mother would never, never have allowed me to be with Melanie"; "You are dark. You look darker still in western clothes." Mr. John left a happy marriage with Melanie's Indian [End Page 107] mother for the lure of a fair-skinned ("skin like a peach"), but cruel, wife. While proud of India's modernization, he longs for America, furnishing his home with "copies of early American furniture," and he is delighted with the arrival of his cousin from America, the recently demobilized Captain John.
Captain John, on the other hand, vehemently rejects the West: "[N]o cars, no cokes, no sky-writing, no cocktail parties—sounds like Heaven to me!" In a bitter, drunken rant after Bogey's death, he exclaims: "Health, wealth, misery. Peace, plenty and putrefaction. The whole world stinks . . . . [W]e deserve horror—horror and plague; a pit full of snakes; hell, flames, eternal damnation." His character is defined in terms of his rejection of life in general, and Western culture and its wars in particular. As an extremely sexist character, he expresses his misogyny most forcefully in a discussion with Mr. John about women "in the marriage market": "They are kittens. They turn into cats. Little girls are as sharp as any professional slut." These prejudices hardly mask the self-hatred he feels. He stops himself in the next breath and recants: "I have an infallible gift for filthying everything I touch." Although Captain John first falls in love with Bea (as in the novel), he moves on to Melanie once Bea witnesses an embarrassing fall caused by his handicap. Fleeing the shame of this show of weakness, he turns to Melanie, a woman who serves him, cares for him, and loves him unconditionally.
Melanie, "shy, fair-skinned, but with a Sari," appears only briefly to be scorned by her half-sister, and pitied by her father, who recognizes her difficult situation. Dreaming of a return to America, Mr. John reasons that Valerie could make a good marriage, and Melanie could be an air hostess; but then he hesitates: "I don't know whether they accept girls with colored blood. Poor Melanie!" When Bea is no longer a suitable love object because she has seen Captain John's handicap, Melanie emerges as the (next best) love interest late in the story: "[Y]ou are so patient, so kind and so sweet." With this new love, Captain John, in a cultural equation of Indians' "state of grace" with western "peace of mind," declares himself all but cured. He asks Melanie to marry him, warning, however, that he will be drunk and bitter again and will make her very unhappy. Nevertheless, she eagerly accepts the offer, "lift[ing] her hands in a sweet gesture as if she were taking him." Predictably—and significantly, as we shall see—Captain John whisks her away on the steamer on which he arrived, back to America.
There are many important differences between the "Big River" draft and the final film version of The River. One of the most striking aspects of this earlier version is the marriage of Captain John to the Anglo-Indian [End Page 108] Melanie. Satyajit Ray claims that he advised against it as "improbable and sentimental."29 But the change in the final version could also have been a question of wishing to avoid possible censorship of the suggestion of an interracial marriage in 1951.30 Whatever the exact reason, as Renoir strove to elaborate the Indian content for greater cultural authenticity, and as the screenplay evolved, such a denouement would no longer be plausible. Also, there was no plan for documentary footage at this point, and the Indian extras appear solely at moments of contact with the British family, at a very superficial level. The family is the center, and Western characters are always the link to the Indian material. The Indians are not depicted as living a life separate from them. For example, when Captain John arrives, he steps ashore and listens to a flute player, gives him a tip, and then says to a small boy grinding spices: "What's cooking? Smells good. Any for me, Junior?" Overall, the characters' embrace of India is absent—Mr. John being the most compelling example—and visions of India are limited in scope, particularly in terms of Hindu beliefs. Diwali is minimally present, but with no references to Kali, the goddess of destruction and creation, who figures so prominently in this scene in the film. Nor, of course, is there the "Bengal Story" containing Radha's dance.
This pre-Radha version of Captain John contrasts sharply with the final character. The "Big River" screenplay focuses on the solution to his moral infirmity and cynicism, and represents to some extent what Priya Jaikumar calls modernist imperial narratives that use the Orient as a backdrop against which to explore the Western psyche,31 albeit here with a positive turn. Instead of the typical loss of self in the face of the Orient in these narratives,32 Captain John is cured of the ills of the West, and finds acceptance and peace of mind with a Eurasian woman. With the removal of his vehement rejection of the modern West and its women in the final version, the film moves away "Big River"'s use of India as a sounding board for Western dissatisfaction.
In the final film version, Captain John's role is significantly diminished. He is no longer used as a mouthpiece for the horrors of the West and of war. By removing the ideological bent in his character, and shifting his bitterness to a brief voice-over commentary on the hero's loss of purpose after the war has ended, he becomes no more than a passing moment in the vast flow of life represented by the river. In the closing scene of the film, all three girls let their letters from the departed Captain John drop and waft away when they hear news of the baby's birth, and celebrate living in the present along the river. This suggests his relatively minor importance in the overall arc of their lives and evacuates him from the narrative's message in closing. This final film version shifts away from [End Page 109] taking issue with the West, from a facile demonstration of racism, and instead opens up space for more Indian content to stand on its own. All of this paved the way for the emergence of Melanie as a very different character in the film.
The pre-Radha Melanie in "Big River" presents an even more striking contrast to the film. Although she remains a peripheral figure much of the time, she plays a critical role in several ways. This version treats the problematic Anglo-Indian situation in a didactic and heavy-handed manner. Victim of her half-sister's racist scorn and her father's whims, she was deprived a mother in his preference for a white woman. Her father's concern for her is limited to her precarious social status. Caring and subservient, she is redeemed by Captain John, who will take this woman of "colored blood" back to his world. She is little more than a cure for Captain John's moral sickness.33 The solution to her cultural and racial problems consists simply of making her "white" by marrying her to Captain John. This is an individual, purely private answer to the racism she endures, as she wins the prize and the prince over the two white girls, and is whisked off to America.
The River
With the arrival of Radha on the scene and her stunning talent as a classical Indian dancer, Melanie's role changed dramatically and shifted away from a colonialist perspective on the problem of Anglo-Indians. In the final film version of the story, rather than a Cinderella-like destiny that saves her from her plight, Melanie stands firmly in her choice of her Indian heritage. She has little use for her convent education, glad to be done with it, and declares that she will always wear a sari. She seems unconcerned about her father's desire to marry her off to their neighbor Anil, who can give her a name and a position in society, refusing at one point even to see him. Although Melanie is also clearly attracted to Captain John in the general rush into first love of all three girls, her stance is grounded in self-awareness and she has a firm grasp of reality. The mature Harriet's voice-over describes her as the only one who knows the seriousness of love, and when Harriet asks her if she wouldn't rather marry an American, Melanie frankly responds: "I don't understand them." Captain John's facile flirtatious remark that she has become a butterfly garners a harsh rejoinder—"from a grub." Melanie is the only one to whom Captain John speaks openly of his feelings of being a stranger. She forces him to acknowledge the truth, and ultimately to claim his place in the world without self-pity, since he will never find a country of one-legged men. [End Page 110]
Given the forcefulness of her character in dealings with Captain John, it is surprising that critics have found this Melanie of the final film version to represent a passive Indian philosophy of consent.34 Consent to the truth is hardly an easy proposition. Quite frequently, Melanie functions as a foil to a certain Western sentimentality, repeating words uttered to her rather than engaging in unhelpful musings. After Bogey's death, Captain John wishes to grieve openly, but to his invitation to indulge in this by wistfully uttering "Bogey," Melanie simply replies "Yes, Bogey." The same is true of her father's concern for her. When she arrives home from the convent, he tells her she is too thin; she immediately answers the same to him. In a telling moment, when her father expresses guilt over having brought her into the world, he laments that perhaps she should never have been born. "But I am born," she emphatically replies. And to his concern that he has "put [her] . . . nowhere," she bluntly counters: "Suppose I like to be nowhere." Refusing sentimentality, Melanie turns these remarks back on themselves, forcing both her father and Captain John to face the truth of each situation. Consent to reality is the only way forward. If Melanie in "Big River" was subservient, comforting Captain John in his self-pity and shame, in the film a far more glorious fate is reserved for her. In Harriet's narrative of the "Bengal Story," she is transformed into a Hindu mythological figure. Here, consent brings reward, as the village girl who has grown up along the river accepts her father's selection of a mate against her own wishes, only to discover that he has chosen the man she loves. The convergence of acceptance with passionate and devotional desire transforms Melanie (as the village bride) into the mythological Lady Radha, who dances her love for Lord Krishna with great creative inspiration.
From the very first, Renoir was fascinated by Radha's talent, and she was also an important resource for Indian culture: "I had a wonderful adviser in The River in regard to India: Radha . . . ."35 He met her through her Swiss fiancé Raymond Burnier, who lived in Benares in the Rewa Kothi palace on the Ganges with Alain Danielou. Danielou was a French scholar of Hindu music and philosophy, who, along with Radha and others, helped Renoir find and record authentic music for the soundtrack. Danielou claims to have introduced them:
When I introduced Radha to Renoir, he was quite taken with her. He changed the movie script, transformed the part of an insignificant Eurasian girl into that of a Hindu, developed her character so that her role would be more important, and made her dance. It then became necessary to add a background of Indian [End Page 111] music that had not been planned on originally, and I was asked to provide it.36
Melvina Pumphreys, United Artists publicist and wife of producer McEldowney, presents a more dramatic version. In an interview with The Saturday Evening Post done as publicity for the premier, she quotes Renoir: "when I talked to her I saw inside of her, and that night I went to watch her dance . . . . She was a goddess!"37 After the filming, in a Los Angeles Times interview with him on February 22, 1951, the encounter was cast as equally powerful: "[W]hen he set eyes on her in a living room of a close friend in Benares, he knew she was the one." The magic of this serendipitous discovery touched Godden as well, who credited Renoir with a "sixth sense or divination" in the decision to travel to Benares to meet Radha and see her dance: "I watched her too and could hardly believe the transformation of this quiet young girl into such riveting beauty, power and intensity."38 The inclusion of the "Bengal Story" and its dance is pivotal. It was an eleventh hour stroke of genius. The last sequence to be filmed, it provides the critical link between the spectacle of India and the narrative, and foregrounds the film's principal philosophical and aesthetic preoccupations.
In an interview with Radha in February 2010 in Adyar, she stressed to me how much Renoir and Godden wanted her dance incorporated into the film after attending her recital in Benares in December 1949, and that in order to include it, they wrote their own version of the mythological story of Lady Radha and Lord Krishna as a narrative support for her dance. Unlike adaptations of Godden's other novels of India, such as Black Narcissus, in which Jean Simmons is made up as an Indian and offers a Hollywood version of Indian dance, here the classical Bharata Natyam form has a history of its own linked to Indian culture. This sacred dance was traditionally performed in Hindu temples, but its connection to courtesans made it the object of the 1934 Devadasi Security Act prohibiting temple prostitution. It was tied to the Indian independence movement as a demonstration to the world that Indian dance represented a national cultural heritage equivalent to Western dance forms. It was Radha's aunt and teacher, Rukmini Devi, who was a major figure in Bharata Natyam's twentieth-century revival as a national art form. Devi stressed both tradition and creative innovation in her important contributions to its renewal. By purifying the form of its erotic elements and by founding schools on a national scale, Devi made it, for the first time, an acceptable public practice for middle and upper-class Indian women. This established its respectability, and linked the dance to both national [End Page 112] identity and women's status at a critical socio-historical moment.39 The River represents one of its first appearances on film for a Western audience, and Radha's collaboration in this project no doubt furthered the dance's cultural ascendency.
Beyond the timely cultural importance of the dance, the "Bengal Story" is the "heart of the film" in its structure, themes, and philosophy. Positioned at the exact midpoint of the film, it is visually and thematically tied to the opening shot of The River in which female hands paint a rice-water design (rangoli) on the ground, explained by the voice-over as a sign of welcome to the film. The spatial, narrative, and cultural context of this rangoli is only revealed within the "Bengal Story," as the female hands are shown to be those of Melanie, as the village girl, and her mother, completing this traditional feminine artwork for her wedding. The story's structural centrality also resides in a privileging of the film's sense of place. The tale of the village girl's river life reflects the frame story of Harriet's love of the river, as well as the documentary footage of the same. This triple layering of the river, as it flows through these three distinct parts of the film, binds myth, personal life, and documentary to a strong and meaningful sense of place. The link between the river geography and its imaginary counterpart diverges sharply from what Jaikumar describes as traditional imperial narratives: "To maintain their integrity they must ignore the place, because narrative coherence is predicated on the continuation of the colonial territory as an unproblematic backdrop."40 While "Big River" largely ignored place, but, I argued, was also suggestive of a break in the traditional imperial narrative in the problematic condition of Captain John's psyche, The River marks a notable shift toward the modernist imperial mode in which place takes on a life of its own: "To acknowledge the place as an entity is to disrupt the narrative and to accept that no presumptions or projects are possible."41 Jaikumar observes generally that this shift is characterized by "a camera working not at the behest of any one character's account but of its own volition," and represents "an early intimation of the primacy of the place and of its independence of will."42 Such "independence" is evident not only in the documentary-like long shots of the river, but even more so in the filming of the dance, which escapes the control of young Harriet's diegetic voice-over tale in its direct address to the viewer. The cultural manifestation breaks through the diegetic boundary to mark India as a place of its own.
This celebration of place as both river geography and a distinct cultural space tied to mythology through Krishna and Radha facilitated the logical inclusion of the mostly female Hindu deities absent from the novel [End Page 113] and "Big River." The mythological story of Lady Rhada establishes a coherent space for other deities, particularly Kali, goddess of destruction and creation, depicted in the extended ceremonial footage of Diwali, and Saraswati, goddess of the arts, who inspires Harriet's "Bengal Story."43 It brings the mythological elements more effectively into the narrative, and inflects the main story of Westerners with a philosophical perspective beyond their own comprehension. As a result of the "Bengal Story," an array of religious and cultural beliefs tied to female goddesses exists as a subtext positioned in a space other than that of the narration of Harriet's first love.
The "Bengal Story" also demonstrates an inspired form of devotional and passionate love that the Westerners in the film are unable to grasp. In the scene immediately following Harriet's narrative of Krishna and Radha, conflict emerges in the main narrative. Valerie grabs Harriet's notebook from which she has read the story, and mocks Harriet's likening of Captain John to Anthony (of Cleopatra fame). The notebook is all but destroyed in the tussle. Valerie then goads Captain John into a game of catch that humiliates him by revealing his handicap, and this causes him to viciously turn on her. Cruelty and egoism drive the relations in this scene, and the harmonious, superior world that links devotional and passionate love with creativity represented in the "Bengal Story" is replaced by amorous strife among the Westerners.
Although Bhatia considers the "Bengal Story" primarily a criticism of Indian dowry and arranged marriage practices,44 the question of the dowry in Harriet's narrative is far less important than that of creativity. It is because of her passion for the man she is to marry, once she discovers her father's wishes have converged with her own, that the village girl is transformed into Lady Radha and is able to express her creative force, bringing herself into line with a constellation of powerful female deities. Renoir's later focus on art as a consolation for the insoluble complexities and suffering in life finds full expression for perhaps the first time in the transformation of a simple village girl's desire into Lady Radha's dance.45 It is not through conflict, but through consent that problems may be resolved, and the dance carries the philosophical message of the film—that acceptance can bring rewards of both passionate and divine love, which in turn fosters creativity.
In The River, this creative and procreative power is the domain of women. This is evident in the mother's pregnancy, the river girl's birth, the worship of fertility goddesses, the frame-story female voice-over, Harriet's artistic aspirations, and of course, Radha's dance. Men are minor players, weak or physically damaged figures, and stand by passively [End Page 114] while women create. The men are little more than props in this sense, conduits for female creativity, just as they are for procreativity in the father's good-humored helplessness over the news of the birth of a sixth female child after the death of his only son. Captain John is Harriet's muse for the "Bengal Story," as is the immobile blue Krishna for Lady Radha's dance. An amusing anecdote serves to illustrate the nearly interchangeable nature of masculine muses. The "Bengal Story" was to be a transposition of the couple Anil and Melanie into Lord Krishna and Lady Radha. However, Renoir did not have time to cover Trelok Jetley (Anil) in blue, so he used a stand-in. Watching the rushes back in London, Carl Koch and Godden remarked on this switch, but Renoir merely replied he hoped this wouldn't harm the picture.46
Radha's dance marks the apex of both feminine creativity and of authenticity in the film's encounter with India. In this sequence, her expressive powers appear to overwhelm the narrating young Harriet, who falls silent at a certain point in her free translations of the hastas (hand movements), as if the dance has outstripped her words. In addition, the fact that the dance is a set-piece, directly addressed visually to the spectator, separates it from Harriet's voice and from her control. As Phyllis Lassner notes: "Radha's performance represents a vital expression of Indian separateness and autonomy . . . .[T]he confident energy and self-contained relationship between the dance and the dancer represent a mockery of Harriet's all-knowing voice over."47 Renoir's centrally-positioned celebration of creativity in art as a possible response to conflict, suffering, and disappointment in life—a path he would continue to follow in subsequent films—is given over not only to feminine powers, but to another artist. The frame voice-over is a fictional construct, as is Harriet's budding creativity evident in her "Bengal Story"; both are created by the director (and screenwriter). But with the dance, the film's most powerful moment resides in the hands (and body) of another artist. Renoir had no control over Radha's dance itself. With this gesture, the film opens up to an "independence of place" not unlike the effect of the documentary footage, one in which, as Jaikumar notes in general for modernist imperial narratives, "the place is made central enough to impede the assumptions projected on it."48 The dance establishes a place in which female creative power and Indian cultural traditions merge seamlessly in a space beyond facile Western assimilation.
The expansion of the Indian content in the final film version following the arrival of Radha, in both the character of Melanie and the addition of the "Bengal Story," completely transformed The River. It was no longer Godden's novel, or "Big River," and perhaps one of the most [End Page 115] indicative comments to this effect is Godden's own reaction late in the editing process. Although overall she very much liked the film, she had several reservations, the most telling of which was the omnipresence of India: "The most important criticism to me is that I feel that your very achievement of showing India has, in some measure, swamped the story.
It seems to me that the picture is overloaded with colour, with the Indian scene, so that it becomes, not a story set in India, but India hung upon a not very strong story."49 Criticize as she might, Renoir completed the editing process, and India remained the focal point of film.
"Monsoon"
As filming progressed in India, the friendship between Radha and Jean and Dido Renoir flourished. When the movie was finished, they traveled to the International Theosophical Society in Adyar where Radha lived, and still does as president of the society. Even before the filming was completed, Renoir was making plans to bring Radha to Hollywood. He was clearly taken with her, with her calm detachment, and her unusual beauty, and believed that she would appeal to American audiences. Plans solidified in correspondence during the rest of 1950 between the Renoirs and Radha and her fiancé Raymond Burnier. Renoir wrote to Burnier that he would like for Radha to come to stay with them to lay the groundwork for another film, and to present her to producers (September 22, 1950). Burnier did not wish to interfere with Renoir's promotion of Radha's career and plans for another film in India with her. He later wrote that he was supportive of her stay in Hollywood for an indefinite period of time (March 15, 1951).
Renoir's wish to make another picture in India with Radha was hardly a secret. In letters, he mentions it not just to Burnier and Radha,50 but also to the principal Indian backer of The River, Fateh Singh,51 to Trelok Jetley (who played Anil),52 and Rumer Godden, who replied: "I am thrilled to hear of your Indian idea with Radha" (April 18, 1951). When Radha was with them in Beverly Hills, Renoir wrote to Fateh about her visit and his appreciation of her unique qualities:
Radha is here with us. We believe she is happy and interested, but as you know she is not the overexcited type and considers the whole world as it is with a perfect calm. She will probably be successful here. It seems that the very strange qualities I have seen in her when I insisted to have her in our picture can be understood by many Americans. The screen is an odd thing. [End Page 116] Outside of beauty or talent there are unknown reasons which make a man or a woman fit with the camera; I call them "screen animals" and I more and more believe that Radha is a screen animal.
(February 27, 1951)
He mentioned to Godden that he wanted to write something during Radha's visit: "My plans are extremely vague. I am trying to use the opportunity of Radha's presence here to put on paper a few ideas for a picture of India."53 And he did put his ideas on paper, in the form of a 27-page untitled treatment dated March 26, 1951, during the period in which Radha was staying with them on Lenora Drive. Indeed, the draft appears to bear the traces of Radha's collaboration.54 A press release during this time, a few months before the premier of The River, mentions producer Kenneth McEldowney's next film project in India with Renoir, which would star Radha:
Ken McEldowney, who produced The River, returns to India to make another film, "Monsoon." The screenplay is written by Jean Renoir and is about a Hindu widow who defies tradition by becoming a school teacher and marrying one of her American students. The teacher will be played by Radha, Ken's discovery, and he'd like Marlon Brando for the student.55
Judging from unpublished correspondence among the four involved (Jean, Dido, Radha, and Raymond), there seems to have been a serious falling out immediately after Burnier, who had promised not to interfere, came to Hollywood and promptly married Radha at the Justice of the Peace on April 3, 1951, with Jean and Dido as witnesses.56 He took her to Europe, and later back to India. Any plans Renoir had for another movie with her seem to have ceased abruptly. He never returned to India, and to my knowledge, ever since 1951 this draft scenario has remained buried among the multitude of projects in Renoir's unpublished papers. Shortly after Radha's visit and sudden marriage and departure, Renoir went on to Europe to make The Golden Coach. He put The River (and problems with Burnier and Radha) behind him, writing to Dido from Italy: "I read Raymond's letter. All of that seems far away. I am now in another world and even The River seems as lost in the past as A Day in the Country [1936]."57 His subsequent encounter in Italy with Burnier and Radha proved both emotionally uncomfortable and sharply dismissive from his side.58
The draft scenario is significant for several reasons, not least in that it confirms Renoir's desire and commitment to work with Radha on another [End Page 117] film. Her character, Padma (purity), is crafted to her personality as Renoir described it in letters. But most critical is the scenario's renewed engagement with India, and what this may say about his attempt to relive, or recreate in a second film, his transformative encounter in The River. Surprisingly, given their judicious deletion from the final film version of The River, elements of "Big River" reappear here, and this raises questions about the extent of the changes Renoir claimed were wrought by India in his life and work.
"Monsoon" is the story of Dwight Erikson, a young American scholar who comes to India to study Sanskrit. On the train to Benares he meets a young Indian widow (Padma) studying to be a schoolteacher, who explains to him that he cannot sit in the ladies compartment. She is traditionally wary, "coldly polite," refusing to do more than help him understand the cultural situation, but he is intrigued by her grace and the "sadness in her look," and "she seems to move in a world of her own, where the noise and agitation of the real world have no part." This brief encounter with her fascinates him. The train's arrival in Benares is marked by what would be cultural footage of the Ganges, people tossing coins in the holy waters, prayers, palaces, chanting—"we can feel the restful calm." Once in Benares, Dwight stays with Philip, an older, seemingly wiser but somewhat cynical friend (an American archaeologist) in his large home on the Ganges. Philip warns Dwight to avoid romantic involvement with a Hindu woman, advising him to frequent prostitutes instead. Dwight nevertheless persists in his pursuit of Padma, who remains distant. As a widow, she lives with her uncle's family, who makes it clear that they disapprove not only of her decision to work, but also most strongly of Dwight. Their attitude, and hers, softens a bit when Dwight donates money to a refugee camp where the family is helping victims of an earthquake. Padma's uncle invites Dwight to go with the family on a picnic, and when Padma is hurt climbing down from a shrine, Dwight must carry her. Padma's cousin, Kashinath, jealously observes them, realizing that Dwight is in love with her. Clearly, Kashinath is as well, although he is married.
Padma becomes involved in the lives of the children she teaches, who live in the refugee camp, and decides to adopt one whose mother has died. The uncle's family refuses to allow her to stay in the home with a child of another caste. Haridas, a rich older friend of her deceased father, who is also in love with Padma, offers her a place to live, which she fills with other needy, orphaned children, whose refugee parents have fallen victim to a cholera epidemic. One day Kashinath, believing that Padma is in love with Dwight, comes to her home to tell her that it is his [End Page 118] right to marry her and that he plans to divorce his wife in order to do so. While he previously approved of her refusal to behave as a traditional widow, he now wishes to force her into marriage, as they share "the same opinions about political and social questions." Padma tells him she is not in love with Dwight, but that it is no concern of his, and orders him to leave, as it is improper for him to be there alone with her. He tries to force her to embrace him, and violence erupts when Dwight arrives. The two men fight, and Kashinath brutally stabs Dwight with a kitchen knife. Kashinath flees (and later leaves the family home in shame), and Padma calls her physician uncle to help Dwight. Padma makes the important decision to visit Dwight and nurse him back to health in the home he shares with Philip, in spite of Philip's continued disapproval. During this time, her school has been turned into a hospital to care for the victims of the epidemic, and Padma adopts more orphaned children and distributes food in the refugee camp. A scene of the burning of corpses at the ghats along the river provides both an idea of the extent of the epidemic and the opportunity for impressive cultural footage. As Dwight recovers, he and Padma spend time alone, and with "devotion in her eyes," they kiss passionately. Dwight admits that he was attracted to her at first because of her exoticism, but that now he loves her as a human being: "There is in the heart of any man a great attraction for exoticism. But now, behind the sari and the big black eyes, he has discovered the human being and he would love Padma as much if she were a neighbor girl in his small American town." Padma responds that because she has nursed him, and touched him, an intimacy that only exists with a husband, she is now his wife. Tragically, after nursing Dwight back to health, she contracts cholera and dies. Dwight joins one of the many funeral processions to escort his beloved down to the burning ghats. In the last scene, Padma's physician uncle and Dwight make their way through crowded streets to the Maternity Hospital, where Dwight adopts a child born within moments of Padma's death. The uncle remarks: "This little girl certainly does not realize that she is going to be an American." At the end of this final scene, the river appears, and "a few close shots show us men praying and meditating." A note at the end of the draft explains: "The significance of this last scene will be made clear by a former dialogue, where Padma tells Dwight of her belief in re-incarnation."
Several aspects of "Monsoon" are quite remarkable. First, certain facts of Renoir's experience in India resurface full-blown. There was an epidemic of cholera and smallpox while he was there;59 his nephew Claude, the cameraman on the film, nearly died of typhoid during the shooting;60 and he received news of an earthquake in Assam while finishing [End Page 119] The River.61 The two men, Dwight and Philip, in the home on the Ganges, are strongly reminiscent of the situation of Alain Danielou and Raymond Burnier, who lived for many years in the Rewa Kothi palace in Benares, where Renoir first met Radha. Both were immersed in Indian archeology, religion, and philosophy. Burnier, like Dwight in the story, was a Caucasian who broke through the race and caste barrier in a relationship with an Indian woman, while Danielou, like Philip, was older and more attuned to Hindu religious practices and taboos.62 The uncle's hostile family appears to reflect what Radha herself told me she went through in making the film, as she moved in with Christine Bossenec, head of the Alliance Française in Calcutta, because her uncle disapproved of her acting in a movie.
Beyond these anecdotal borrowings from real life, this scenario, like The River, incorporates timeless practices of religion in what appears once again to be plans for documentary-like footage, but this time focused mainly on the funeral customs at the burning ghats of Benares. Far more attention is devoted to Indians—Padma and her family, and the children at the school—and an attempt is made to capture contemporary life as well: her cousin Kashinath is a political radical who believes a free India should not return to customs of the past, and contrary to tradition, Padma's husband had requested that she work after his death. On the other hand, Hindu religious practices and beliefs are interwoven with a typical melodrama of love, illness and death. Also in this vein, one of Renoir's most prevalent earlier motifs re-emerges in the knife fight in a scene of violent triangulated desire.63
This patchwork, even with its extended focus on Indian characters and customs, reiterates one of the most problematic aspects of the "Big River" scenario in its use of India to tell a Western tale. Ultimately, the Indian content is pressed into the service of an unlikely interracial love story. What Renoir removed from the "Big River" draft, because Satyajit Ray found it improbable and sentimental, returns with a vengeance here. Padma references cultural taboos in order to declare herself married to Dwight. Even more surprising is the use of Hindu beliefs for the purposes of Dwight's adoption of an Indian baby girl who is the reincarnation of his beloved Padma. The baby's American future recalls "Big River" in its redemption of the half-caste Melanie through her departure for America and marriage to Captain John. In "Monsoon," it is not just the child who will be removed to a more familiar Western setting, but a re-incarnated Padma as well. Dwight admits that he was first attracted to her exoticism, but she later becomes as familiar as the girl next door. This transformation [End Page 120] of Padma with "the sari and the big black eyes" into just another "human being" may be a bid for universal understanding, but in Dwight's view, he only truly loves her when he can see her as a familiar American type.
Viewing Renoir's River experience retrospectively through the prism of this later abandoned work raises questions about how much India and The River really changed his outlook. The storyline seems to point to yet another futile attempt to conquer Hollywood.
Radha brought Renoir closest to India in terms of his ability to represent a specific iconic cultural form in the Bharata Natyam dance, and in the important cultural and philosophical changes he was able to make in the final script of The River, in large part because of her. But when he tried to bring that new-found love of India to America, to Hollywood, in the person of Radha, when he tried to re-script this fascination into a tale of West meets East, he failed to recreate the authenticity he felt The River had captured. It is very tempting to read "Monsoon"'s end—Dwight's possession of the reincarnated Padma—as Renoir's own story, but without a happy ending. Returning to Beverly Hills with an "American" Radha, "the screen animal" whom he would introduce into Hollywood circles in the hopes of doing a second film with her, only resulted in a loss of India and his dream of making her a star. It is not possible to reconstruct exactly why Renoir abandoned his idea, but one can conjecture that when Radha suddenly married Burnier and departed, his hopes for a return to filming in India evaporated. Although this scenario clearly shows that he was having tremendous difficulty with authenticity (returning to "Big River" themes and the familiarity of triangulated passion), it is impossible to say what it might have become had it been filmed in India, given the striking shift in cultural focus from "Big River" to The River.
A cryptic remark made by Rumer Godden to Dido Renoir in a letter dated May 22, 1951, shortly after Raymond and Radha's marriage and departure, speaks to this failure: "Radha wrote from Paris ... so the plan la Jeannot [Jean] didn't happen ... but Jeannot would not have done in India ... nor Radha away from it" (ellipses in original). Obviously, Renoir's plans for another film in India never materialized. Nor did Radha ever make another movie, remaining in India to become president of the Theosophical Society, in the tradition of her father. Renoir's transformation that he attributed to his experience in India took other paths, particularly in a continued interest in women's creativity in The Golden Coach and French Cancan, but he limited himself to European subjects. East may have met West for a time in The River, in Renoir's creative collaboration with Radha, but a reincarnation of that encounter was not to be. [End Page 121]
Katherine Golsan is Professor of French and Film Studies at the University of the Pacific. She is translator of books by Tzvetan Todorov and François Furet/Ernst Nolte. She has published articles on major nineteenth-century French novelists, Baudelaire and painting, and film adaptation. For the past several years she has been publishing on issues of gender in Renoir's cinema. She is currently working on a longer project on Renoir's The River.
I would like to express my gratitude for the invaluable assistance of Radha Burnier, Patricia Walters Pawelski and her daughter Sharon McKell, Sonia Fleury, Arnaud Mandagaran, Chris Faulkner, Antony Sellers, Elizabeth Kelly, Julie Graham, Tanya Storch and Robin Imhof.
Notes
1. Jean Renoir Papers, Collection 105, Performing Arts Special Collections, Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles. Where possible, all subsequent references to unpublished correspondence in this collection will be cited as letter dates in the text.
2. Jean Renoir, My Life and My Films, trans. Norman Denny (New York: Atheneum, 1974), 247.
3. For an excellent, detailed account of this experience see Janet Bergstrom, "Oneric Cinema: The Woman on the Beach," Film History 11.1 (1999): 114-125. During this process, he wrote to Fernand Bercher: "[F]or me the prospect of making other films is completely unbearable." Jean Renoir, Jean Renoir Letters, ed. David Thompson and Lorraine LoBianco, trans. Craig Carlson et al. (London: Faber and Faber, 1994), 196.
4. "Address to Canadians," January 17, 1952, Renoir Papers.
5. Forrest Judd brought him the deal (Renoir, Letters, 216) and was the associate producer on the film. Judd made his own film in India in 1953 (see note 55 below).
6. Many references to McEldowney's unsavory practices appear in archival correspondence of the period, as well as a suggestion of their pervasiveness in Alexander Sesonske, "The River Runs, The Round World Spins," New Review of Film and Television Studies 3.2 (2005): 105-131.
7. Renoir, Letters, 224. This plan is also mentioned in The New York Times (April 17, 1949). Even after the serious problems with McEldowney on The River, Renoir wrote Fateh Singh, the major Indian investor in the film: "I would like very much to do something else in India. Concerning the future, with or without Kenny, I am rather in his favor but with a different contract." April 10, 1951, Renoir Papers.
8. Telegram from Godden to Renoir, May 15, 1950, Renoir Papers.
9. Rumer Godden, A House with Four Rooms (New York: William Morris, 1989), 124.
10. Renoir, Letters, 223-224.
11. Subsequently published in French in Cahiers du cinéma 2.8 (1952): 31-32.
12. Renoir to Ruth Roberts, February 16, 1949, Renoir Papers.
13. E.g., "What I discovered now is the beauty and the quality of the ancient world. . . . [P]ractically India didn't change in four thousand years, and is still living with the aristocratic style which has completely disappeared from our mechanized civilization. To be confronted every day with boatmen working their oars on the Ganges River who are directly stepping out of an Egyptian bas-relief . . . believe me, that's exactly the shock I was needing after eight years in Hollywood." Letters, 224. For a full array of potentially damning comments by Renoir, see Nandi Bhatia, "Whither the Colonial Question?," in Cinema, Colonialism, Postcolonialism, ed. Dina Sherzer, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), 51-64.
14. Early on, Renoir described Captain John in the novel as "a physically broken-down, morally sick, but still hopeful, wounded officer." Letters, 199.
15. Bhatia, "Whither the Colonial Question?," 52.
16. Ibid., 61.
17. See, e.g., Christopher Faulkner, The Social Cinema of Jean Renoir (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 162-179; Martin O'Shaughnessy, Jean Renoir (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 181-189; and Sesonske, "The River Runs," 127. [End Page 122]
18. Jean Renoir, Lettres d'Amérique, ed. Dido Renoir and Alexander Sesonske (Paris: Presses de la Renaissance, 1984), 285.
19. Jean Renoir, Renoir on Renoir: Interviews, Essays and Remarks, trans. Carol Volk (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 37.
20. In 1947 he wrote: "Now that the war has ended, I've got it in my head not to leave Hollywood without having made at least one film that satisfies me entirely. . . . if one knows what one wants, one can try anything in the framework of American cinema." Letters, 203; and to his nephew Claude in the same year: "[B]efore taking off, it would be good for me to have a real success here." Ibid., 204. This desire intensified during the casting of The River, writing to Rumer Godden on October 2, 1949 in favor of Tommy Breen as Captain John: "he represents the ideal American boy as many think of him, and would be very close to the hearts of all American parents. He would undoubtedly be the perfect bridge between our Indian picture and the American public. With him, we eliminate the danger of having our film considered in the USA as a foreign production." Renoir Papers.
21. Satyajit Ray, "Renoir in Calcutta," in Our Films, Their Films (New York: Hyperion, 1994), 113. He also later wrote of the film's "fairytale unreality" that "robs it of value as a social document," in "Under Western Eyes," Sight and Sound 51.4 (1982): 271.
22. Ann Chisholm, Rumer Godden: A Storyteller's Life (London: MacMillan, 1988), 229-230.
23. Sesonske, "The River Runs," 105-131.
24. Renoir, My Life, 248.
25. Renoir, Renoir on Renoir, 35-36.
26. Renoir Papers.
27. Letter from Ram Sen Gupta to Renoir, May 10, 1949, Renoir Papers.
28. In a letter to Renoir dated April 20, 1950 (Renoir Papers), Dudley Nichols mentions reading the announcement in the Los Angeles Times that they had found Radha. Chisholm dates the encounter as Christmas 1949, when Godden and Renoir saw her perform at the Theosophical Society Convention in Benares (Rumer Godden, 227). In my interview with her, Radha confirmed that this dance recital was what got her the part.
29. Andrew Robinson, Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 68.
30. This is certainly possible given Renoir's censorship problems with The Woman on the Beach. The Motion Picture Production Code office was headed by Joseph Breen, Tommy Breen's father.
31. Priya Jaikumar cites Chinua Achebe on Africa in this context: "Can nobody see the preposterous and perverse arrogance in this reducing Africa to the role of props for the break-up of one petty European mind?" Cinema at the End of Empire (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2006), 165.
32. Jaikumar uses Godden's Black Narcissus as an example: "they can exercise little control over a devaluation of themselves." Ibid., 174.
33. See note 14.
34. See, e.g., Bhatia, "Colonial Question," and Robert Cross, "Jean Renoir's Cinematic Adaptation of Rumer Godden's The River," Doshisha Studies in Language and Culture 10.4 (2008): 575-596.
35. Renoir, Renoir on Renoir, 34. [End Page 123]
36. Alain Danielou, The Way to the Labyrinth: Memories of East and West (New York: New Directions, 1987), 193. The most logical explanation is that Renoir was introduced to Danielou and Burnier through Danielou's long-time friend Christine Bossenec of the Calcutta Alliance Française, and that Raymond Burnier then sent Renoir a photo of his fiancé.
37. Pete Martin, "We Made a Movie—Without Hollywood by Melvina McEldowney As Told to Pete Martin," The Saturday Evening Post, September 8, 1951. Godden also had her version of how Renoir cast this revelatory encounter: "At first she was so small, light boned and unassuming, she looked like a mouse, not even prepossessing but when I talk to her and heard that calm resonant voice I knew why we had had to come. That night I watched her dance. She was a goddess" (A House with Four Rooms, 123).
38. Godden, A House with Four Rooms, 123.
39. The 20th-century revival of Bharata Natyam and its continued global importance is a complex subject. For a detailed study, see Janet O'Shea, At Home in the World:Bharata Natyam on the Global Stage, Middletown, CN: Wesleyan University Press, 2007.
40. Jaikumar, Cinema at the End of Empire, 167.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid., 172. Jaikumar does not include The River in her argument.
43. During his first trip to India, Renoir realized the importance in Bengal of Kali, and he was also fascinated by a ceremony for Saraswati during which, as with Kali in the film, clay figures were submerged in the Ganges. Renoir to Eugène Lourié, February 11, 1949.
44. Bhatia, "Whither the Colonial Question?," 58.
45. For a detailed analysis of the importance of the dance sequence as an exposition of "the function of art in relation to this new philosophy of acceptance" (177), see Faulkner, The Social Cinema, 175-178.
46. Renoir, Letters, 255.
47. Phyllis Lassner, Colonial Strangers: Women Writing at the End of the British Empire (Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 102.
48. Jaikumar, Cinema at the End of Empire, 168. Although Jaikumar's characterization of the modernist imperialist mode's sense of place is far more ominous and engulfing (as in Black Narcissus), The River develops this independence of place in a more structurally complex manner through the layering or multiplication of narrative/ documentary threads that converge in the "Bengal Story" and its dance.
49. April 18, 1951. While beyond the scope of this essay, it is worth noting that she was deeply critical of the voice-over, a late addition that helped to integrate both the documentary footage and the "Bengal Story" into the main narrative.
50. Radha wrote to the Renoirs on October 21, 1950: "I most earnestly hope that your desire to make another film in India will materialize." Renoir Papers.
51. Fatah Singh replied: "I was very interested to learn that there was a possibility of your shooting a story in India again." March 23, 1951, Renoir Papers.
52. Letter from Trelok Jetley to Dido Renoir dated April 1951: "Awaiting your arrival in India for next picture." Renoir Papers.
53. March 29, 1951. He said the same to Fateh Singh: "I have two ideas to be shot in India. I will try to put on paper a short synopsis of them before starting my work on my European picture." April 10, 1951, Renoir Papers. [End Page 124]
54. A comparison of Radha's handwriting in letters in the archives strongly suggests she made some handwritten corrections on the draft scenario.
55. Los Angeles Times, April 21, 1951. This is only reference I have found to this draft scenario, and even though some of the details are wrong, it is obvious that McEldowney knew about the project. From this information, it appears that the film had a working title of "Monsoon," and I have taken the liberty of referring to it by this title for the sake of clarity. This scenario is not to be confused with a very different film by the same name made in India by Forrest Judd, Renoir's associate producer on The River. Judd's Monsoon (1953) was based on a Jean Anouilh play entitled Romeo and Juliet. Regarding the plans to use Radha again, although McEldowney takes credit for her discovery in this press release, in reality, he objected to her for The River and once hired, tried to remake her physically (teeth and skin color), which she refused. The Performing Arts Special Collections at UCLA, where the Jean Renoir papers are housed, denied without explanation a formal request for copyright permission to publish this treatment as an appendix to this article.
56. Los Angeles Times, (April 3, 1951). After this falling out, Radha and Raymond each wrote to Jean and Dido to try to understand why the Renoirs had abruptly shut them out. Radha was deeply distressed (April 29, 1951, Renoir Papers), and Raymond was particularly concerned about Radha's disappointment that they neither invited them to a private showing of the film, nor attended Radha's dance concert in Los Angeles (May 8, 1951, Renoir Papers).
57. May 26, 1951, Renoir Papers.
58. The couple seems to have been present for some of the filming of The Golden Coach in Italy during this period. The friendship was re-established, and this was confirmed in a telegram from all three from Italy to Dido Renoir, but prior to this, Renoir wrote to Dido several times about the issue, reiterating how hurt they both were by Radha's attitude (see his letter dated May 28, 1951, Renoir Papers).
59. Interview with Kenneth McEldowney, Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1951.
60. Martin, "We Made a Film," Post.
61. The Renoirs received a letter from Christine Bossenec (April 18, 1950, Renoir Papers) with news that an earthquake had destroyed the villages in Assam.
62. According to Danielou, they had both converted to Hinduism as untouchables, and his frustration with Burnier's marriage to Radha was in part due to a defiance of taboos regarding marriage between castes (Labyrinth, 194).
63. This trope is most obvious in his thirties films such as La Chienne and La Bête humaine, but reappears in the Hollywood films, most clearly in The Diary of a Chambermaid and The Woman on the Beach. [End Page 125]
