Due to a decent retrospective (16 Films plus two documentaries by Jacques Rivette and Jean Eustache) of Renoir's work here in Nuremberg, I had the chance to see six of his films (I was very busy and missed the rest ) screened from English / German subtitled 35/16mm Prints. The silents shown were "Fille de l'eau / Whirlpool of Fate", "Nana" and "Petite marchande d'allumettes / The little Match girl".

First of all, I have to confess that I still have a little problem to get into silent films, though I've never had a real discouraging experience - the only one probably was "The Nurtull Gang" by Per Lindberg so far. So those three films by Renoir managed to enrich my cinematic horizon a lot, I suppose. About "Whirlpool of Fate", I mostly agree with both of you, though I felt sympathy especially for the afore criticised melodramatic attitude - imo, the film is some kind of tragic fairy tale (a poor girl loses her family, travelling with gipsies and finally gets to know the man of her dreams - that's one of oldest fairy tales ever, at least in Europe), and the over-the-top exploitation of the conflicts Gudule (Catherine Hessling) is involved in, reminded me of some German post-WWII romantic films (you asked for Olaf Mller's choice in the "Sight and Sound"Hidden-Gem-List, arsaib? "Monpti" has quite a lot in common with this one and it is a masterpiece!) and of Douglas Sirk (another great director I'm discovering at the moment). And it was one of Renoir's first films, of course. That shall not be forgotten. But I liked it a lot nevertheless (8/10).

The second film was "Nana", which was all right but not a great effort at all. It was shining through that this was a highly ambitious project for Renoir, but I think the film, though worth the experience - especially because of Catherine Hessling's gorgeous, unbelievable performance, Werner Krauss and a beautiful new print - is a failure. A condign failure,yet. Even A (as he complains very often about films being too short ) thought it was too long and needed too much time to tell about few things, and so did I. Overall, I didn't really know what to think about it. But Catherine Hessling's acting was SO extremely intoxicant (maybe it was an overwhelming effect? ), that I decided to watch it again in the future. (6-7/10)

The third and last film, "The little Match Girl" was probably my personal favourite of the retrospective. In opposition to the other 4 Films (except "The human Beast") it gave more space to me as a viewer, and not only due to its experimental, surreal style. While the other films all suffered from too strong storylines and precise narration, this one had all formal and narrative qualities recquired by its story, and so it gave me much joy, both intellectually and emotionally. As my mother always read out of Hans-Christian Andersen's short stories for me when I was a child, it was fascinating to watch those childhood memories turning into a strong, rich and adult film. (9/10)