This is one of those discs that, for some film lovers, is in and of itself the justification for a purchase of a multi-region DVD player. (Although, to get a little technical here, the region coding of the disc—region 0—is not the roadblock to playback on a U.S. player. It's the PAL braodcast standard, which multi-region players also conquer.) A loving restoration of a once-thought-lost film...a fantastic window on the work of an underrepresented-on-DVD film artist...supplemented by an eye-opening piece of movie scholarship and topped with a sampling of the film artist's revelatory early work, the Edition Filmmuseum presentation of Frank Borzage's The River is like some cinephilic dream made plastic.
The film itself is a 1929 Fox production that, in the form presented here, is as strange and spellbinding as anything the silent cinema has produced. But it would be disingenuous to deny that the effect of the film is in some way dependent on its present presentation—only the middle forty-five or so minutes of the film, depicting the peculiar relationship between virginal he-man Charles Farrell and one-time bad man's girl Mary Duncan, were found by William K. Everson and Alex Gordon in the Fox vaults. A short scene from a Swedish archive is added; the rest of the film is "restored" via title cards and production stills. So while we are aware of the bad man's girl's back story, and the threat potentially represented by her jailed lover, and the force of the deaf-mute named Sam who seeks a particular vengeance, none of that registers with quite the force that the semi-acquatic pas des deux between Farrell and Duncan does.
Here's Farrell's character on the boat that he himself built, of course. The river's too low for him to pass under this mountain, so he's stuck for a while...
As is Duncan's character. Who claims to be fed up with life, more or less. That raven there is her main confidante. (The film's French title was The Woman With The Raven.)
And here's a whirlpool. These considerable allegorical touches are actually enhanced by the film's direct (for 1929) carnality. The merman-like quality of the naked Farrell as he floats toward an almost unbelieving Duncan as she sits by the rocks constitutes one of cinema's most unforgettable effects.
Janet Bergstrom's short film Murnau and Borzage at Fox: The Expressionist Heritage, a terrifically smart and informative cine-essay, completes disc one; disc two contains three short films from 1915-16 directed by and starring Borzage: The Pitch of Chance, The Pilgrim, and Nugget Jim's Partner. These pictures showcase Borzage's humanism and romanticism in inchoate form; their impact is none the less palpable for that.
The Editions Filmmuseum shop is here.
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