It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

As the day evolves into night; night into day; life into death; death into life all in a circle so does the waters of the river flow around the Earth in a circle- transient, but everlasting.The film is visually beautiful, magical, and literally poetic in parts by the stories and poetry recited in it. On the surface it appears as a coming of age story of 3 teenage girls in love with a disabled visiting American war veteran, but underneath it is something more: a story about the transience of youth and an ode, a love song to India; an idealized India that is of the 1920's as seen through the eyes of its colonizers, the British, who have fallen in love with it. As such we see no images of poverty and exploitation. In fact, we rarely get to know the Natives as individuals, especially as the story line is centered around British and American characters. Yet, still the film is worthwhile to see, as it provides a fascinating glimpse into India; of its people, superstitions, religion, and way of life. The film has one major flaw hindering a 10 star review and that is lack of character development. Under Bergman, this film could have been a masterpiece. Sadly, the characters never seem to emerge into truly 3-D individuals; preventing us from understanding what they feel and feeling what they feel. Character development needs time and I have little doubt that Renoir was restricted by time constraints imposed by Hollywood. Nevertheless a film worth seeing.

Three adolescent girls growing up in Bengal, India, learn their lessons in life after falling for an older American soldier.While I am not at all familiar with the cinema of India, my impression is that it probably did not get started until the 1960s. Maybe this is wrong. But Jean Renoir's "River" may be the first significant film to come out of India following the country's independence in 1948.The "coming of age" aspect of the three girls is very interesting and a good narrative, but more important is the way Indian culture and religion is shown. When did the West become interested in India? Long ago, surely. But there seems to be a Renaissance mid-1900s with such writers as Christopher Isherwood. This film, no doubt, helped push that Renaissance.

Having read many of Rumer Godden's books,I hope to G-d she looks nothing like Harriet. There is Nothing,and I mean NOTHING in all the scenery of India that could take my mind off the face of that girl. I kept thinking, braces? nose reduction? paper bag?) No- since she was indeed the center of the movie,and that in itself was the main mistake, they casting should have been ,shall we say, less unfortunate. And to the reviewer who thinks a movie set in Bengal needed less local color,I say, "&*(*&&%!.) Who cares that three girls had a crush on a fairly uninspiring,homely,one-legged man? I didn't. I watched for "the local color." I have lived in Bengal and dipped my toes in the Ganges stared down a Brahmin cow,stroked a donkey painted pink for some unknown reason had a banana thrown at me by a Hanuman monkey and stood beside a dancing bear. Yes India is colorful and dangerous and not the least bit romantic. That nonsense should have died in all of your heads a long time ago when you discovered the reality of famine, corruption, bribes, and inequality that is India.I liked the music but found it strange that Melanie had such a thick non-Bengali accent and when her father tried to praise her painting (which isn't in her blood-so where did she learn it?) he said "bahaut achi" which is Hindi for or very nice.They are in Bengal. He would have said "Khub Bhallo" - which means very good in Bengali.To me this is one of those ,The Emperor Is Naked Folks movies.

The River is Renoir's India film, and among the many other directors he influenced, you can see here his abiding impact on the great Satyajit Ray. Renoir follows a British family living in India, and brings his usual appreciation of human flaws and desires to bear on the situation. If the movie doesn't really rank as one of his best works (I would put it far below Grand Illusion or Rules of the Game, for instance), this might be because, leaving Europe, Ray seems to lose some of his sureness of touch, particularly in the scenes with the Indian characters. I always think of a Satyajit Ray film like the glorious Devi as brilliantly capturing what Renoir missed -- as simultaneously paying tribute to Renoir and showing the rich complexity of Indian life that Renoir, as an outsider, didn't quite manage to capture. This isn't a put-down of Renoir -- more an appreciation of how far-reaching his influence has been, and how he has opened up a remarkably wide range of possibilities for other directors, who remain fond of him even when they surpass him. Along these lines, it's especially worth noting that Ray worked on The River and scouted locations for the film. He also told Renoir about his plans for his first film, to be based on Pather Panchali, and Renoir encouraged him to go forward and become a director. Really, Renoir is one of those rare directors who, the more you learn about him as a person, the more you like him.