Borzage brought his depiction of the inner world of lovers into the great outdoors in the exquisite film The River. A wandering lad (Charles Farrell) meets a worldly!shy;wise woman (Mary Duncan) by a river bank. She tames his wanderlust, he restores her soul, but they must contend with her gangster boyfriend before they continue their lovers' journey downstream. The superb camerawork of Ernest Palmer highlights the many qualities of erotic symbolism in Borzage's conception of the river romance. Though The River survives with only five of its seven reels, as William K. Everson notes, "we can be thankful that it is one of those typical late silents that were all mood and no plot....Fortuitously, the closing reels also contain a few flashbacks from the missing reels."