Swamp Water is directed by Jean Renoir and adapted to screenplay by Dudley Nichols from the novel written by Vereen Bell. It stars Walter Brennan, Walter Huston, Dana Andrews, Anne Baxter, Virginia Gilmore, John Carradine, Eugene Palette, Ward Bond and Guinn Williams. Music is by David Buttolph and cinematography by J. Peverell Marley.
Dana Andrews plays Ben, a young man who while searching for his dog out in the Okefenokee Swamp happens across fugitive Tom Keefer (Brennan). With Keefer swearing his innocence, the two men become friends and hunting partners. But it's not long before suspicions are aroused back in town...
Renoir's first American film is ultimately a lesser light from his output. Not helped by the interference from 20th Century Fox supremo Darryl F. Zanuck, Renoir still managed to craft a film of visual atmospherics that neatly cloak a salty observation of backwater inhabitants. Renoir purposely keeps the pace sedate, choosing his moments when to insert tenderness or peril into the morally murky play, his sense of character building a treat to observe. The swamp itself, actual location filming a major bonus, is the key character on show. It's a place feared by the locals because of the dangers that lurk there, but of course the swamp and its critters are nothing compared to the humans back in town...
All told it's very good film making, from cast performances, visuals and narrative worth, but you just come away knowing it should have been so much more. That it could have had an edge to keep you perched on the end of your seat throughout, and to then deliver a coup de grâce instead of the tacked on happy finale that we get. Something which of course wasn't of Renoir's doing... 7/10
Dana Andrews plays Ben, a young man who while searching for his dog out in the Okefenokee Swamp happens across fugitive Tom Keefer (Brennan). With Keefer swearing his innocence, the two men become friends and hunting partners. But it's not long before suspicions are aroused back in town...
Renoir's first American film is ultimately a lesser light from his output. Not helped by the interference from 20th Century Fox supremo Darryl F. Zanuck, Renoir still managed to craft a film of visual atmospherics that neatly cloak a salty observation of backwater inhabitants. Renoir purposely keeps the pace sedate, choosing his moments when to insert tenderness or peril into the morally murky play, his sense of character building a treat to observe. The swamp itself, actual location filming a major bonus, is the key character on show. It's a place feared by the locals because of the dangers that lurk there, but of course the swamp and its critters are nothing compared to the humans back in town...
All told it's very good film making, from cast performances, visuals and narrative worth, but you just come away knowing it should have been so much more. That it could have had an edge to keep you perched on the end of your seat throughout, and to then deliver a coup de grâce instead of the tacked on happy finale that we get. Something which of course wasn't of Renoir's doing... 7/10