How charming is this?
Renoir in his first Hollywood movie, with a touch of French realism, contrasts the gruff inhabitants of a river village to the wild nature of a macabre surrounding swamp (and they seem to be gruff precisely because they are conditioned by the primordiality of the place).
It's not really a Western, except for the exceptional cast, but the underlying wild spirit is that. The swamp acts as a place of death and refuge, as the desert could be. Plus the sheriff is really rough, especially his voice -obvious, is Eugene Pallette.
I liked the ambiguous human relationships so difficult to establish, they create a certain harmony in the village:
-women are dissatisfied, doomed to loneliness, they…