La fille de l'eau

Admittedly made merely to exploit his wife Catherine Hessling's "photogenic" attributes, Jean Renoir's solo directorial debut already displays his trademark humanism and painterly eye – while Hessling herself turns in a far more naturalistic performance here than she did in NANA (1926).

The plot is simple and melodramatic: Hessling loses her father, is abused by her brutish uncle (possibly inspired by Griffith's BROKEN BLOSSOMS [1919]), falls in with crooked gypsies (who ultimately incur the wrath of the people and have their caravan burned to the ground), is taken in by a wealthy family but is caught stealing for her uncle's sake…until the latter gets his come-uppance and the girl is engaged to her employer's young son. The accompanying organ score is effectively evocative to begin with but, eventually, it takes a tediously avant-gardist turn.

The film's barge opening anticipates Jean Vigo's L'ATALANTE (1934) and the search at sea, F.W. Murnau's SUNRISE (1927); there is also some remarkably fast cutting throughout, a style which Renoir would largely forsake in his subsequent work. The highlight of WHIRPLOOL OF FATE, however, is undoubtedly an amazing dream sequence which, uncharacteristically for the director, is heavily reliant on optical effects and camera technique; incidentally, the two shorts I followed it with on Lionsgate 3-Disc "Jean Renoir's Collector's Edition" proved similarly experimental.