La Fille de l'eau

Renoir features his wife as a waif à la Pickford in a loopily picaresque hour involving an extremely abusive uncle, joining the local gypsy camp, a post-concussion fever dream which may not make much sense, but makes up with an iguana, and so forth. The countryside's pretty, and the peril forcefully presented (perhaps a bit too much so for what this is going for) with some interesting editing. It's all a bit overstuffed and scattered all over the place, though.

I'm not the biggest fan of Jean Renoir and this falls right in the middle for me. For the time period this was a pretty damn good movie. However I rate movie on personal enjoyment and as odd as it may sound I felt like this movie was a bit too long and episodic.

This early Renoir silent tracks the difficulties of a young woman left alone in the world after her father dies. She (Virginia) receives the attentions of at least four different men, beginning in the first hours after her father's burial. Renoir traces the ways these men relate to needy Virginia (generally, not good). The film's most interesting sequence sees Renoir include a fascinating dream/nightmare sequence, which explicitly reveals the psychological toll of her mistreatment.