gavin6942 The family of a Parisian shop-owner (André Gabriello) spends a day in the country. The daughter (Sylvia Bataille) falls in love with a man (Georges D'Arnoux) at the inn, where they spend the day.This simple film, less than 45 minutes long, is now available thanks to Criterion. Who can say no to Jean Renoir in the 1930s? So many of us are preoccupied with American comedies of the era, we forget that other countries exist. And this one at a time that France was just about to be invaded by Germany!Although her career spanned over 20 years, this would turn out to be Sylvia Bataille's most memorable role. Renoir never finished filming due to weather problems, but producer Pierre Braunberger turned the material into a release in 1946, ten years after it was shot. Braunberger was right to release the film.

ironhorse_iv Adapted from a Guy de Maupassant story, A Day in the Country is a short 40 minutes film is, in fact, just a part of a movie that Director Jean Renoir didn't finish. The opening lines tell you the reasons why. It stars Sylvia Bataille as Henriette Dufour and Georges Darnoux AKA George Saint-Saens as Henri. They meet by chance when Henriette's father (Andre Gabriello), a 19th century Parisian ironmonger, borrows a cart for a trip into the countryside. He's joined by his wife, Juliette (Jane Marken); his daughter; her fiancé, Anatole (Paul Temps); and his mother-in-law. Stopping at a small riverside restaurant, they are charmed by a pair of local young men: Henri and Rodolphe (Jacques Brunius). the mother has a harmless flirtation with a rural "rake," while the daughter has a more serious liaison with a handsome young man. The two locals offer to row the women down the river to see more of the countryside while their men rest and go fishing. Rodolphe, who has been lusting after Henriette since he first saw her, now has her in his boat and is prepared for action. Henri, concerned about what might happen to the girl, makes a deft switch, giving Madame Dufour to his friend and taking Henriette in his own boat. This movie is somewhat chilling. There seems to is suffused with such an overpowering sense of reality that watching it can make one feel a bit like a voyeur and lustful. The way the men plan their way to get to Henriette is predator like, even kneeing down in the grass watching them picnic like lions hunting. Also the way Henri makes his move on Henriette near the river can bother the audience as we're not sure if he rape her, or made love. The way, Henriette looks at him, near the ending shows fear, but we're unsure if it's the fact, she leaving, or what Henri did to her. This is where the film ends: Fourteen years later, the same family vacations at the same spot. The handsome stranger returns, hoping to renew his affair with the daughter; unfortunately, the girl is now married to a dull, insensitive jerk. The two former lovers ponder what might have been. Renoir had planned to film scenes depicting what happened in the years between the two holidays, but he closed down production due to an acute "creative block." For this reason, although the film was shot in 1936, it wasn't released to theaters until ten years later. For its American distribution, Day in the Country was bundled together with two other short European films -- Joifroi and the controversial The Miracle -- as the portmanteau film The Ways of Love. Sadly this movie will be more likely seen in film or art school, then at home. It's a great movie to study art. Many people say that Renoir's films mirror his father's art looking at the impeccable riverbank shots in this masterpiece. This is artistic filmmaking at its least pretentious and most absorbing have never been more moved by anything in the cinema. It is, despite the cliché, a moving poem and painting and does more in its forty minutes dealing with humanity and all its flaws and vulnerabilities than any other work of art. Renoir transformed Maupassant's cynical view of sexuality and the bourgeoisie with his own more generous and affectionate vision of humanity and changed Maupassant's jaundiced view of the countryside into a rapturous ode to nature. Profoundly loving, forgiving, gentle - above all, immediate. You can excitement of the lovely day ahead, feel the warmth and greenness and the flowing river and the beginning of love. Magnifique! Merci pour ce petit bijou

Richard Burin Partie de campagne (Jean Renoir, 1936) is one of the great unfinished films. Usually such projects exist in tantalising snippets because a director snuffed it before realising his vision, or failed to get a movie off the ground due to short-sighted financiers. In this case, Renoir quit because it kept raining. Admittedly it rained for much of a six-week shoot, but even so... Happily, the 40-minute Partie de campagne doesn't seem unfinished, with an intriguingly-paced three-act structure that works just fine and a heady summer atmosphere that stands as perhaps the most inspired example of its director's quiet lyricism. It's an often breathtaking pastoral film, creating a fully-realised rural world a la Tol'able David and Louisiana Story into which to throw our protagonists.Sylvia Bataille is Henriette, a Parisian girl who decamps to the countryside for the weekend with her parents, her grandmother and her fiancé. There, she and her mother (Jane Marken) encounter a prospective-family-man-cum-intense-romantic and his caddish mate, who sweep them off their feet and onto a pair of rowing boats. But this is 19th century France, and the ties that bind won't slacken just because someone's fallen in love.The film is gentle, entertaining and sometimes very funny, benefiting from superb performances by Bataille, Marken and young romeos Georges D'Arnoux and Jacques B. Brunius, a luscious musical score composed for its 1946 release and Renoir's effortless, transcendent handling of the material. Its coda is absolutely heartbreaking: the perfect wrap-up for a film that's shot through with unshakeable conviction and a tangible love of the countryside. Renoir's fondness for Bataille's expressive, elfin face is just as obvious - he would return to it later the same year in his fascinating serio-comic polemic Le crime de Monsieur Lange. A set piece here that sees her guilelessly embrace the pleasures of a swing is slight but somehow unforgettable. Elsewhere, Renoir's script matches the exalted treatment, encompassing as it does themes of nostalgia, teary joy and the essence of being.But Partie de campagne does have one - perhaps major - flaw, so bizarre as to be unintelligible. That's the presentation of the father and the fiancé, Anatole, as music hall imbeciles. The younger is particularly ridiculous, resembling a young Stan Laurel as he repeatedly squawks and wobbles his bottom lip. For that matter, the dad looks not unlike Oliver Hardy. Really odd. Perhaps Renoir, adapting Guy de Maupassant's novel, is making a satiric point about the unredeemable unsuitability of the young couple, or the ineptitude of Parisians cast adrift several miles from the big city, but it's a directorial decision that's never really justified.Still, that's the only gripe about this amazing piece of work, which largely hums with brilliance and ultimately stands shoulder-to-shoulder with La grande illusion as the director's greatest achievement.Trivia note: That's Renoir himself as the restaurateur, Poulain.

Boba_Fett1138 This movie is a beautiful looking one and is like a day in the life of of a family on their summer holiday on the countryside, somewhere in early 20th century France.The movie is filled with some unexpected contrasts and metaphors. The movie in now way can be called a formulaic one and it picks its own path with its story. This ensures that the story is both realistic as well as unexpected in parts.The way how the movie ends is in large contrast with the rest of the otherwise happy and cheerful beginning of the movie. It has a summer holiday look and feeling over it, in which the main characters, from the big city, are obviously enjoying the beauty and quietness of the country life. You would expect the love story to unravel as a romantic one but the romantic first encounter really doesn't go as often gets portrayed in movies. I must say that the movie is just like life and it doesn't try to bloom things. But perceptions differ, as can be also seen in the final sequence of the movie, in which the events of that one summer day in the country left a big lasting impression on the girl.What Jean Renoir does really well is capturing the right mood and atmosphere of the movie. Even though I obviously wasn't around in 1936, it still feels all very familiar and pleasant. Of course the movie gets helped by its country side environments, which gets captured perfectly on camera.Not all of the actors were real experienced professionals, which can be seen back in their performances but overall this shouldn't trouble you to much, since Jean Renoir perfectly knows to tell the story with its images and character behavior, rather than relying completely on the actor's skills.I wouldn't go as far as calling this Renoir's best but it's nevertheless a great, humble, realistic, honest, warm portrayal of life.8/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/