"I can’t imagine cinema without water. The movement of cinema has something ineluctable about it, like the current of a stream." Renoir’s use of water imagery in his French films continued during his wartime exile in Hollywood (Swamp Water, The Southerner) and culminated in this tableau of life by the Ganges River. He worked closely with author Rumer Godden to adapt her account of her childhood in India, incorporating documentary and poetic interludes. The director’s worldview had progressed (or regressed?) from the protest and satire of a social critic to the reverence of a philosopher. The River was the first film in color for both Jean Renoir and his nephew Claude, the cinematographer. "This film, so rich in metaphor, is ultimately only about metaphor itself, or absolute knowledge." – Jacques Rivette