What a contradiction: there is both so much and so little here. Scorsese loves it. It’s co-written (adapted from Rumer Godden’s book) and directed by Jean Renoir – whose Grand Illusion and Boudu I own and absolutely love. And it was his first film in Technicolor, shot entirely on location in India, with all its bright, bursting, colorful possibilities. I expected to love it.

But the story and the acting here are both awful. There’s unfortunately really no other word for it. Most synopses seem to suggest that it’s a story about a young woman’s crush on a much older, American World War II veteran – both her awakening to the idea of love, and her early adolescent frustrations and disappointments with it. More accurately, it’s about that young woman’s coming of age, as she attempts to jump headfirst into love, life, and artistic immortality (and their opposites – heartbreak, death and the impassive, destructive transience of existence, symbolized by the ever-flowing Ganges).

So it should have been profoundly moving. But the acting was so affected, and the dialogue so banal that it was hard to form an emotional connection with Harriet (the young woman), her colonial family in the last days of the Raj, the one-legged war veteran struggling with feelings of impotence and irrelevance, or especially their Indian neighbors and friends. When major events occurred, that was all that happened: they occurred. I felt no drama about how they would resolve. Scorsese (in an interview included in the DVD extras) was very forgiving about how attached he was to these characters; I simply didn’t feel the same.

That said, it is certainly among the most beautiful movies I have ever seen. Scorsese was indeed right to point to the connection between Renoir’s vision of India here and his father’s impressionist canvases. What makes The River succeed so gloriously as art, and fail so monumentally as a movie, is perhaps epitomized by the camerawork. The camera almost never moves at all – the film unfolds like a series of moving canvases: the vibrant scenery, the people working, the carefully positioned montages of different characters. They unfold through still camera shots, cutting gradually from one to another, building a visual resonance that sticks with you. The experience is indeed something like walking through the Impressionist rooms at the Musée d’Orsay - not terribly exciting, but a sumptuous, indulgent feast for the eyes.

I’d almost like to own this one for that very reason – the descriptive, documentary-influenced sequence floating down the titular river, the tribute dance to Krishna by Melanie, and the late series of set shots of the family sleeping (especially the twin boys) deserve special mention. It would kind of be like owning a multimedia art book. But next time I’d probably watch it with less than half an eye to the "action."