Directed by Jean Renoir, 1925
Two kids riding a white transparent horse, a barge moving slowly down a canal, a man capable of handling himself falls overboard and disappears below the stagnant water. This is the few images found in the 1925 film of Jean Renoir, son of the famous Impressionist painter Pierre Auguste Renoir, the masterful filmmaker of the Silent film era & a veteran of 40 plus films till the 1960's.
The man's fall is brought on by no foul play and the cameraman gives us the impression that there will be a sign of life beneath the water; but there is none. His lifeless body isn't recovered till the morning by a search rescue effort.
From the loss of her father, Catherine Hessling, the aftermath leads her to a life of poverty and crime via theft. In her life of theft, she meets another boy who is apt and reduced to living and poverty and they become a pair of misadventurous youthful criminals though she is driven by survival and he by both survival and a flare for sporadic criminal acts.
When Catherine is confused for another woman, she is then accused of setting a fire in a haystack. A water-wagon comes but the fire is a lost cause and cannot be contained. The peasants, disgruntled and angry, locate the wagon of Catherine set it one fire and celebrate their reprisal, and we are unaware if.....is inside of the wagon or not. This is the mystery Renoir leaves us with.
The art of the silent film is an art of an eternity; words are never the predominate inasmuch they are not use, only body language and a force sense of wonder. [La Fille de L'eau] would be considered in today's film market as unfulfilled but it is a fulfilling film nonetheless more so than anyone of its time and this time could ever be.
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