Il fiume dalle acque magiche

Susan George once again gives a wonderful down to earth performance in a very different film role, a mature woman with a child and having to make life and death decisions. Tom Conti and Rod Steiger excell in their acting abilities in a film which kept me spellbound right to the very end.

My review was written in May 1989 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screening.

This warm and humanistic feature about the delayed impact of World War II in an idyllic beach community in Yugoslavia requires meticulous handling to attract a connoisseur audience for traditional cinema.

Second production from the team of Simon MacCorkindale and Susan George tapos a talented local director Rajko Grlic, whose visual mastery and control of atmosphere are much in evidence. In looks and mood the film resembles a '60s classic of Eastern European cinema, Jiri Menzel's "Capricious Summer".

Heading a mixed British and Yugoslav cast, Tom Conti stars as a friendly but somewhat simpleminded lifeguard at a remote lake in Yugoslavia during the last summer of the war. Though the Germans are camped nearby and there is partisan activity in progress, the conflict has pretty much passed the residents by.

Conti provides refuge for a young widow Ana (Susan George) and her son (Ntitzan Sharron), both refugees from the Germans. At the suggestion of his friend Martin (Rod Steiger), he agrees to marry Ana to protect her, since she has no papers.

In danger of losing his job since he's never had the chance to save anyone from drowning in the placid lake, Conti ironically saves a man who turns out to be the new German commandant. Saluted for the act in a ceremony staged for German newsreel cameras, Conti unwittingly becomes a pariah, hated by the locals for "collaborating".

Screenplay by novelist Borisalv Pekic (collaborating with MacCorkindale and the director) carefully develops the moral issues as well as a background of superstition that gives the film a fresh appeal and avoids the overly direct approach of so many war films. Helmer's suggestive use of odd details and symbols, such as a beautiful blonde singer who sunbathes in the nude or a giant catfish (only its bubbles and wake are glimpsed) living in the lake add to the pic's rich texture.

Bringing the deliberately paced, episodic film to life is Conti's subtle central performance. Thesp tackles the challenging assignment of playing a simpleton by avoiding cliche or obvious effect, and the result is moving without bathos.

Exec producer Susan George is self-effacing and supportive in her platonic lover role, with solid portrayals by Stgeiger and Alun Armstrong as the local innkeeper. Slavic thesps are expertly dubbed with well-conformed British accents. Grlic scores high marks for his first English-language effort.

Ace cameraman Tomislav Pinter captures painterly compositions, with striking night photography and use of the lake's mirroring surface.

I discovered this film in the mid 1990's, and was so impressed I bought my own copy on video. I would call this a film-buff's film. The performances of Tom Conti and Susan George are exceptional - I believe this to be Conti's best work since 'The Glittering Prizes' - and the locations are stunning, evoking the gentle and simple life of the riverside resort before the Germans turned up.

The characters played by George and Conti are thrown together in a marriage of convenience, as she and her son are hiding from the German invaders. The best scenes are when Conti and George share the screen, and this mysterious woman begins to develop respect, even affection, for the simple man who has been nominated to protect her.

Sensitively directed, the story is told in brief vignettes which help to convey the easy lifestyle of the characters who live at and near the resort. In essence, this is the story of Anrija's (Conti)true coming-of-age, when he's thrust into an adult situation he would never have had the chance to experience had the war not happened in his particular neck-of-the-woods. An all-round superb piece of film-making.

The summer in question is 1944, but with all the English and American accents it's easy to forget the setting is meant to be wartime Yugoslavia, where a hapless lifeguard with no one to rescue ("…it's not my fault the beach is safe!") is asked to shelter a partisan refugee and her young son. The language barrier in the English-Yugoslav co-production is evident in the often over-simplistic dialogue (spoken in English, but better suited to subtitles) and in the perhaps too lazily constructed plot. The film is three-quarters over when the first real conflict appears, after the innocent lifeguard saves his first life: a drowning man later revealed to be the local Nazi kommandant. Otherwise, it's a pleasant, undemanding drama, with a beautifully photographed, postcard-perfect setting (outside Karlovic).