Expected more

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

This is handled pretty well by newly arrived French director Jean Renoir (son of August), including the regional dialect. "Fit" for "fought," and so on. I wonder if he quite grasped the connotations of some of the exchanges. Dana Andrews to his fiancée: "Seems like lately all I git from you is cussin' out and tongue lashin'." Spiteful Virginia Gilmore: "You ain't felt m'tongue yet." The basic story is this. A small group of subsistence farmers and trappers live on the edge of the dreaded Okefenokee swamp in Georgia, perhaps in the 1920s or 30s, judging from the artifacts. Young Dana Andrews enters the swamp alone, looking for his hunting hound.He runs into Walter Brennan, who disappeared from town years ago after being convicted of a murder he didn't commit. The good folk of the town believe Brennan to be dead. The two become friends and partners in a lucrative trapping business, with Andrews promising never to reveal Brennan's existence. He also promises to look after Brennan's young'un in town, the illiterate and barefoot Anne Baxter. But things go awry and feelings turn right hard agin Andrews. Even Baxter, who worships the trousers that cling to him, is given to animadversions.The plot is complicated. Essentially, Andrews is the pressed and misunderstood hero. Virginia Gilmore is his duplicitous ex fiancée. Ward Bond, John Carradine, and Guinn "Big Boy" Williams are the heavies. With a few exceptions, the townspeople are dull conformists, easily manipulated, yearning for revenge. Plus ça change.

Jean Renoir the director of La Bete Humaine and Grand Illusion arrived at our shores in 1941 looking for employment in his field. I don't think anything in his life ever prepared him for doing a story such as Swamp Water with characters as American as you can get. In fact watching Swamp Water I would swear it was something directed by John Ford. Renoir probably got a few pointers from him by studying Ford's work or even in conversation.These rustic folks from the Okefenokee Swamp could have come out of work like Tobacco Road or The Grapes Of Wrath. Renoir certainly had an eye for scenery and an ear for speech idiom like he'd been born here. He also assembled a group of players who were perfectly cast by 20th Century Fox. Several of them in fact were veteran members of the John Ford Stock company.Young Dana Andrews son of Walter Huston and stepson of Mary Howard defies his father to go looking for his prized hound dog in the swamp and comes across the notorious Walter Brennan who was convicted of murder but escaped and has been living in the Okefenokee for several years. It's not easy but the two of them bond and become trapping partners. Of course Brennan can't come out of the swamp lest he face the hangman.Andrews also finds out that Anne Baxter is Brennan's daughter living under an assumed name. She becomes a problem because Andrews is keeping company with the flirtatious Virginia Gilmore, a swamp vixen if there ever was one. We also learn the truth about the murder Brennan is accused of.Renoir did some actual shooting in the Okefenokee and 20th Century Fox did a fine job in blending it with studio footage. The ensemble cast is first rate, but the one who stands out for me is Virginia Gilmore. Her character is definitely one that you would find more in French cinema. I guess Renoir had to bring something from France for his American masterpiece.And it is a masterpiece. And you'll swear it's a John Ford film.

An ironic theme runs through this first American Renoir film - Fear Nature! Obviously, Zanuck and 20thC. Fox could have cared less about what Renoir had developed in his oeuvre up to that point. What mattered to them was that he had a reputation. Of course, in effect Zanuck could have found out Wayne Gretzky was a great athlete and so handed him a baseball bat requesting grand slam homeruns. Despite the troubles with the ignorant Hollywood producers, Renoir managed to direct a film and tell a story that is endearing and enduring. He also purveyed as much of his stylistic grace as was possible under the conditions (but it wasn't much). Great depth of field is utilized but conformed to a Hollywood brand of specularity - the gaze of the Other! Overall, Renoir has his hands tied as shot-reverse-shot systems, one-shot closeups, plan americain shot scales and decoupage classique continuity dominate. Even rear projection is used for the sky! When the camera isn't sneaking through the swamp representing the gaze of the other, the story is allowed to be told fluidly. Brutality versus chastity, God versus nature, redemption versus utilitarianism all have something strongly connected to Renoir's oeuvre. Brutality/Chastity in Swamp Water plays out at the bar and in Renoir's silent films like La Fille. God/Nature is continuously at play with Renoir especially in his inclusion of tropes like the river and the Pan character while in Swamp Water prayer can miraculously heal snake bites. Redemption/Utilitarianism was at the center of La Chienne, M. Lange, Bas Fonds and Marseillaise while in Swamp Water it is appropriated for familial relationships where one father uses his reputation to protect his kin and another father must redeem his reputation to do the same. Are these big ideas and themes dumbed-down then in Swamp Water? I believe that they are at the service of an audience that promotes film as escapist first and foremost. Therefore, the themes are played out with depth, but require some bushwhacking and personal exploration to access those deeper meanings. This film gets a lift from great acting (thank Renoir for that). Polyvocal systems from films like Illusion are replaced in Swamp by polytonal systems of Ben who speaks one way with the tom-girl (big papa), another with the blondie (suave romantic) and another with his father (whipping boy). This polytonal form contributes to added psychological identification. The rear projection was surely enjoyed by Zanuck while he was making love to his blow-up doll and munching on a Big Mac. The ascetic based answers provided for issues of freedom and justice are quaint for a contemporary viewer. Another inversion from Renoir's French work to Swamp Water is in its politics of justice where crime of necessity (M. Lange) is domesticated into crimes of opportunity while the revolutionary spirit of agitation disrupting order is status quoed into agitation ordering disruption. It might seem that this film is common, corny or campy... but Swamp Water somehow makes it out alive (like its characters from the swamps). For a North American viewer, the direction of Renoir leads to a fluid and clear telling of a story that has inherent appeal from the New World value system and is perhaps relayed better through the Frenchman than through a Hollywood director.

A swamp that is widely perceived by all the locals as impenetrable offers refuge to a convicted murderer who has been hiding out there for years and has learned its lessons well enough to actually get by quite well. Fear of the swamp and its cottonmouths and alligators is enough to keep any civilized person out, but when a hunter's dog jumps out of his canoe and gets lost in this swamp, its the love he (Dana Andrews) has for his dog that draws him deeper into the swamp and sets up the meeting with fugitive Walter Brennan. It turns out the swamp isn't so bad after all, as Andrews and Brennan team up to collect a valuable set of furs from the animals they've trapped. Back in the town the truth of the murder for which Brennan faces hanging emerges in a very well told story. Jean Renoir was able to bring the town into the swamp or vice versa in this beautifully filmed movie. For sure the best actor awards go to Walter Huston who plays Dana Andrews father, and whose second wife is being courted by another great, John Carradine. The primordial beauty of the swamp makes a nice contrast to the dramatic backwoods small town swamp of this slice of America.