Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Whirlpool of Fate (1925)

This drama from director Jean Renoir, his first feature film, stars Catherine Hessling, Harold Levingston and Pierre Champagne.

Gudule Rosaërt (Hessling), called Viriginia in English-language prints, lives with her father and her Uncle Jeff (Pierre Lestringuez) on a canal barge. When her father dies in an accident and the barge is being sold, her Uncle attempts to force himself on her and she leaves to escape the situation.

Gudule takes up with an intinerant mother and son nicknamed ‘The Bat’ and ‘The Weasel’ to survive. Gudule is taught the finer points of poaching by The Weasel when they are confronted by a rich but stupid farmer who destroys a fishing pot of The Weasel’s. While the farmer is bragging to the villagers of his brave retribution, The Weasel sets fire to the farmer’s haystack in retaliation. Seeking to ratchet up the punishment, the drunken farmer raises a mob to burn down the Weasel’s caravan wagon. Mother and son flee abruptly leaving Gudule to face the mob alone. The wagon burned, Gudule escapes into the night.

Gudule accidently falls into a quarry and is left in shock from the fall, the fire event and her abandonment. Son of a well-to-do mill owner Georges Raynal (Levingston) takes care of the girl by bringing her parcels of food, and when she is left unsheltered in a nighttime rain storm Georges goes looking for her. Finding her the next morning, Georges brings her to his home where his family nurses her back to health.

On the way to shopping in the village, Gudule is contfronted by her uncle who has been tramping about and takes what little money she has. He threatens her to get more money and she is forced to hand over money that has been entrusted to her to give to a saddler to settle an account.

Georges discovers that the vendor has not been paid and is told a lie when he asks Gudule about it. Georges decides suddently to accompany his parents on their business trip to Algiers. Pensive Georges overhears a confrontation between Gudule and her uncle and the men begin fighting, ultimately ending in the uncle retreating in the canal swimming away like a rat.

For Renoir’s first released film, the results are average at best. There is little that is compelling about the story that is fairly routine is its plot and structure. There are, however, a few moments of inspired visuals — a close-up here, a sequence there. More important is Renoir’s use of water as a thematic and visual element. Hessling’s character, true to the film’s French title, is often seen walking near water, reflected in water, framed against a background of water, throughout the film. The water theme seems less to reflect an aspect of the Gudule character and more as a signal of Renoir’s future use of water themes in his later films.

— Carl Bennett

This Blu-ray Disc edition of Whirlpool of Fate (1925) has been mastered from a 4K digital restoration of a good to very-good 35mm print held by La Cinematheque française. The scan has been image stabilized and much of the dust and speckling have been digitally removed. The source material for the restoration may have been on the verge of decomposition as the are occasionally transitory changes in the contrast of certain shots with disappearing details in highlights, notably in the nightmare sequence. The image quality, if very-good overall, is nonetheless only as detailed as a good 16mm reduction print, with some blasted out highlights and image details lost to a generation or two of photochemical duplication. Any still frame on a high-definition system reveals that, while the picture details are soft, the film grain of the source material is faithfully and subtly reproduced in this 4K scan. In other words, this may be the best that this film will ever look.

This presentation is accompanied by a music score composed and performed on piano by Antonio Coppola. The music accompanies the film’s action well and is pleasant entertainment.

The supplementary material includes audio commentary by film historian Nick Pickerton.

We recommend this edition of Whirlpool of Fate as the best-quality home video edition.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

This NTSC DVD edition of Whirlpool of Fate (1925) has been mastered from a good to very-good 35mm print.

We recommend this inexpensive three-disc Jean Renoir set for its very-good to excellent prints that are all of better quality than previous editions on budget VHS videotape. Some films in the collection are not available elsewhere (yet).

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 1 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a good 16mm reduction print, but the contrasty video transfer loses highlight details and has very dark, closed-up shadow details. It can be tough-going in sections.

The film is accompanied by a cobbled-together music score of preexisting orchestral music.

We cannot recommend this edition of Whirlpool of Fate since the better-looking edition from Lions Gate noted above has been released.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is also available directly from . . .