The Whirlpool of Fate movie storyline. Gudule, tranquil in her life on a barge in late 19th-century France, has her existence shattered when her father drowns in a freak accident, leaving her with her abusive uncle who pilfers her inheritance and attempts to rape her.
Escaping the barge, she befriends a young, petty criminal in a small nearby village, nicknamed “The Weasel,” whose misdeeds incite the wrath of local peasants, who ultimately burn the coach in which Gudule lives. Again on the run, Gudule falls down a steep cliff and has eerie dreams about her past assailants. A wealthy young man Raynal finds and nurses her back to health but is unable to express his love for her until the brutish uncle returns, provoking him to act and defend her.
The Whirlpool of Fate or The Girl of the Water (French: La Fille de l’eau) is a 1925 French silent drama film directed by Jean Renoir and starring Catherine Hessling as its heroine. All of the French copies of this film have been lost but English copies continue to exist with complete copies of the intertitles (albeit in English). The intertitles have been translated back into French so that modern viewers in France can still enjoy the film in a way that is as close as possible to the original as it originally screened.
About the Story
In an age of canals and barges, the movie takes place in the late 19th century. The scene opens with the slow progress of a barge making its way down a canal that is lined with oak trees. The heroine’s brutish father, a pole man, is somehow knocked off the barge, where he disappears under the serene and still surface of the water. The camera lingers on the water, perhaps to detect a bubble or two rise from below, but nothing can be seen of the pole man’s last breath. The death is purely by accident, and although a rescue effort is mounted, his body is not recovered until the next morning.
Reduced to poverty from the loss of her father, the heroine falls back upon her own resources to eke out a simple living by stealing. She happens upon a rogue who has a similar lifestyle, and they join together for a few brief acts of criminal mischief, but he is far more abandoned to petty crimes than she is.
A classic case of mistaken identity leads to the heroine being accused of setting fire to a French peasant’s haystack. Alarmed, the farmer peasant races to all his neighbors to help put the fire out. A wheeled water wagon is rushed from the village fire station to the scene of the crime, but no one can put out the fire. The peasants think she started the fire, and rush over to her gypsy wagon, and torch it. A macabre fire dance ensues as the locals dance around the burning gypsy wagon, shaking their fists at the wagon, not knowing if someone is inside it.
The Whirlpool of Fate (1925)
Directed by: Jean Renoir
Starring: Catherine Hessling, Charlotte Clasis, Pierre Champagne, Maurice Touzé, Georges Térof, Madame Fockenberghe, Harold Levingston, André Derain, Van Doren, Pierre Lestringuez, Henriette Moret, Pierre Renoir
Screenplay by: Pierre Lestringuez
Cinematography by: Jean Bachelet, Alphonse Gibory
Set Decoration by: Jean Renoir
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Grapevine Video
Release Date: March 20, 1925
Views: 219