The River
About The River
Allen John Spender has built a boat and wants to take it to sea. He falls in love with Rosalee, who had been the mistress of Marsdon, a man now in jail for murder.
Cast & crew
More about The River
Frank Borzage directed. William Fox produced, and Fox Film released the picture. John Hunter Booth wrote the script with Dwight Cummins and Philip Klein, from a novel by Tristram Tupper. The cast list names Farrell's character Allen John Spender. Plot summaries call him Allen John Pender. Mary Duncan plays Rosalee, Alfred Sabato plays Marsdon, Ivan Linow plays Sam Thompson, Margaret Mann plays the Widow Thompson, and Bert Woodruff plays the miller. It is a part-talkie: some spoken scenes, a synchronized score and effects, and English intertitles, recorded on Movietone.
Themes
Look
Ernest Palmer photographed the river and the boat Spender builds.
Technique
Spoken passages, music, and effects are carried on the Movietone sound-on-film track.
Music
Maurice Baron is credited with the score, alongside the Rapee and Pollack theme song.
Preservation
About 55 minutes survive. The Munich Filmmuseum, with the Swiss and Luxembourg cinematheques, built a reconstruction that bridges the gaps with stills and title cards. The American Museum of the Moving Image screened that version in 2006.
Notes
- Trade and reference dates put the release on December 22, 1928, and some accounts call the film a 1928 picture.
- In the same stretch Borzage also directed Farrell in Seventh Heaven, Street Angel, and Lucky Star.
