RIVERRUN

US, 1969, 90 minutes, Colour.
Louise Ober, Mark Jenkins, John Mc Liam.
Directed by John Korty.

Riverrun is a small budget film which was not screened. It fits into the pattern of films showing the youth-questioning in America and the drop-outs of the 1960's. The couple in the film are not hippie vagrants or rebels against everything. Rather, they withdraw from the hypocrisy of the rat-race to a Californian sheep farm. They go back to nature, try to live simply and by hard work and prepare for the birth of their child. The main complication is the girl's old sailor father who comes to stay with them, interferes, resents their way of life and preaches normality to them while his own memory twinges at his own conventional, yet rakish life.

The story is pleasingly simple and human; some audiences, however, found it dull. Beautifully photographed in a rural area by the sea, and well acted by a little known cast, the film is gently critical of U.S. civilisation although tentative in its own solutions. Riverrun is reassuring in its truly human values.

1. How genuine is the withdrawal of the couple from campus life and urban complications? Why did they drop out?

2. What effect does the continual picturing of beautiful landscapes have on you? How does it effect your judgement on the actions of the main couple? What values are there in close contact with the land?

3. The couple are not legally married. Why? Are they 'equivalently married'?

4. What is the role of the father in the .film? Contrast his past and his picturesque roving with the morality of the couple's life?

5. How is the conflict of the generations presented? What are the father's values, the reasons for his interference and quarrelling?

6. How is emphasis given to the pregnancy? How do pregnancy and birth affect emotions and outlook of husband and wife?

7. What future is there for the couple? Note the end with the girl devoted to the baby and the hesitancy in the young man's eyes.

8. Is the film valid comment on American morals and way of life? Is the answer which is proposed here a realistic solution?