This is a beautiful, sometimes extremely delicate, often very eerie film of love and death in the nearly primordial Florida Everglades. Both the director (Renoir) and the cinematographer have created a mystical feeling surrounding the setting, and it's a perfect match for the moral complexity Renoir draws from the characterizations. It is not an easy American film; it's morally challenging. Dana Andrews is perfect casting in this way; he is anything but a transparent presence on screen. Anne Baxter too, has an unspoken pain about her that's ideal. And Walter Brennan is just, as always, wonderful.
Review of Swamp Water
