"The real artists tells about himself entirely, with a perfect sincerity - but without knowing it." ~ Jean Renoir

Jean Renoir arrived in America at a crossroads. Jean and secretary (and future wife) Dido sailed into New York on New Year’s Eve 1940, unsure as to his future as a filmmaker and even if he wanted to continue. Jean had taken a beating from his French countryman over his last film, the misunderstood and underappreciated masterpiece, La règle du jeu, and it had sent him into a depression, just as the Nazi threat forced him to leave France for an unknown length of time. Daryl F. Zanuck was a fan and a Francophile and offered Jean a two-film contract, and then the pair started an extended tango as to what the first Renoir project would be. Jean wanted to do an Antoine Saint-Exupery story and Zanuck initially wanted him to do ‘French stories’ until Renoir persuaded him to do a ‘purely American story’ - a Vereen Bell novel that Dudley Nichols had written a script for – Zanuck relented. Zanuck gave Renoir Irving Pichel, an American director, to act as producer, help with the language barrier (and spy for Zanuck) and Jean went to work.

Ben Ragan (Dana Andrews) is a backwoods hunter in a small settlement on the edge of the Okefenoke swamp in Georgia looking for Trouble. Trouble is his lost dog, but it leads him deep into the dangerous swamp where he discovers a fugitive Tom Keenan (Walter Brennan) and after initially fighting, the two end up bonding. Ben returns to the town and keeps Tom’s secret but tells Tom’s daughter Julie (Anne Baxter) that Tom is still alive. Ben goes into a hunting partnership with Tom and his bounty from the swamp raises suspicions amongst his fellow townsfolk, including the dastardly Dorson Brothers (Ward Bond and Guinn Williams). Ben battles family issues with his disciplinarian father (Walter Huston), as he finds himself attracted to Julie - much to his current girlfriend's (Virginia Gilmore) chagrin and tries to keep Tom safe from the law.

Renoir’s instinct was to require location filming to imbue the project with authenticity and found Zanuck the producer different from Zanuck the Francophile as he said no. Renoir may have assumed he could work at his usual pace and authority as a revered international director but was quickly to discover how Fox worked – it worked under control freak Zanuck, nicknamed ‘the czar of all the rushes’ by Joe Mankiewicz. Finally Jean was tossed a bone and got granted a small allocation for some location filming and the trip enthused him as it gave him a feel for the people of the region in Georgia who he found similar to the peasants he filmed in his 1935 classic Toni. He argued for Tyrone Power as Ben but settled for Dana Andrews (a better fit) and fought for Anne Baxter over contracted Fox starlet Linda Darnell. Both actors proved their worth although Renoir spoke almost no English and relied on Dido to be his constant translator. His style of having long conversations and vacillating over the right set ups for shots soon got back to Zanuck who told Renoir in no uncertain terms, ‘You are going entirely too slow…’  Zanuck sacked Renoir’s cameraman Lucien Ballad for journeyman lensman Peverell Marley in order to hurry things up but his methods couldn’t endear the director to him and Jean fully expected to also be sacked – and he says he was for one day at least.

Renoir tried hard to construct a film that would at once satisfy Zanuck and also be one he himself could live with. He was in sure territory with a tale that told of suspicions and repercussions in a small, hermetic community; of small and big betrayals and of the ties that bind – this was the lifeblood of La règle du jeu and the rural setting had resonances with the ground he tilled in Toni. Some of the mob mentality reverberated with his The Crime of Monsieur Lange and the stubbornness of Ben was an echo of Jean Gabin’s driven train driver in La bête Humaine. That is to say that human stories were Renoir’s meat and he knew no other way than to tell stories as the artist he was, an auteur before the term had currency in a system that could barely allow Renoir to function as he usually would. Jean found himself a cog in the machine, a stranger in an even stranger land.

But what of the film? Well, the film itself is a revelation. It’s a well-made, compelling snapshot of a hermetic rural society on the edge of civilisation, full of fine performances and authentic atmosphere. Despite his language problems, Renoir stewarded excellent work from not only Andrews and Baxter but also from Walter Huston, Walter Brennan and the smaller roles were beautifully rendered by old stagers like John Carradine and Eugene Palette, and newcomer Virginia Gilmore is wonderful as the girl who betrays Ben. Brennan is unexpectedly superb in a dark and forceful role which showed him to be so much more than an Extra who made it to an Oscar - it showed why directors like Hawks and Wyler found him a valuable resource. Ward Bond is solid as usual and plays the odious villain perfectly – indeed the film is almost like a John Ford project – a Dudley Nichols script with so many of Ford’s ‘stock company’ appearing on the cast list. Zanuck was possibly hoping for a repeat of The Grapes of Wrath type success with a prestige director attached.

Anyone who’d read of Renoir’s ‘Hollywood period’ would know that historically it was mostly written off as sub-par, a shadow of the earlier triumphs. That may be fair at one level due to the stellar nature of his French output prior, but all great artistic careers ebb and flow and from this distance Renoir’s Hollywood films are full of vibrancy, interest and style and remain remarkably effective and vital. They also retain much of Renoir’s fingerprints, even if some remained missed opportunities or disappointments in Renoir’s estimation. This was certainly the case with Swamp Water as Renoir expected it to be so bad he’d have to slink away stating, ‘I’ll try to find some corner of the provinces where I can live very cheaply.’

Only weeks after the studio filming began Renoir was considering getting out of his two picture deal with Zanuck and wrote to Dudley Nichols, ‘I’d rather sell peanuts in Mexico than make a film at Fox.’ What the experience revealed to Renoir was that he was not a good fit for the Hollywood factory line approach. Renoir had idealised the world shaking Hollywood of his youth, the Hollywood of Chaplin, Griffith, von Stroheim and later Lubitsch and Ford, naively thinking it might still exist he went searching for it. He considered himself a great artist and not a commodity and those two extremities could never easily coexist within his vision. He was stunned that it was usual in Hollywood for a director to not be involved in the editing, an unthinkable case in his methodology but one a micromanager like Zanuck would insist on. Renoir never worked with Zanuck again but Swamp Water is much better than Jean thought it would be and a worthy entry into his catalogue of fine films. It was not La Grande Illusion, but then again, what was?