A DAY IN THE COUNTRY (Renoir, 1936 and then 1946)
Criterion Collection, Blu-ray, Release Date February 10, 2015
Review by Christopher S. Long
Jean Renoir's “A Day In The Country”(“Partie de campagne”, 1936) has its legion of devotees,finishing in the top 100 in the most recent “Sight & Sound”critics poll. While it is undeniably beautiful and sometimesdownright breathtaking, I wonder how much the film's support owes toits unique and tenuous place in the oeuvre of one of cinema'smost-respected masters.
Long before the omnibus film everbecame a thing, Renoir, still in the early stages of hisextraordinary career, concocted the bold plan to mount a short filmwith all the care and attention normally lavished on feature filmsand with an eye towards eventually teaming it up with two othershorts for a full-length theatrical release. Logically enough hedecided to adapt a Guy de Maupassant short story for the start ofthis project and began shooting in 1936.
Problems mounted quickly duringproduction, including a national workers' strike and some of the mosttorrential summer rain the area had witnessed in years (put to gooduse in a gorgeous scene of brewing storm clouds and flooding waters).The subsequent delays forced Renoir to abandon the film for a priorobligation (his next movie “The Lower Depths”), leaving his castand crew high and dry and the film both unfinished and unedited untilafter the war.
By that time Renoir was working inAmerica and had all but forgotten about his day in the country, butMarguerite Houlle Renoir (the director's lover through most of the'30s) and her sister Marinette Cadix edited the footage, and producerPierre Braunberger (a Jewish man forced into hiding during theOccupation) released the film at Cannes and then later to the Frenchpublic in 1946. Though accounts have differed over time, Renoir maywell have been unaware of any of these developments until after thefilm's release. Supposedly he did not even see the final cut until1950.
He must have been surprised at how goodthis long-abandoned experiment turned out to be. The story, set in1860, is quite straightforward. M. Dufour (Andre Gabriello), a Parisian shopkeeper, takes a weekend trip to the countryside for apicnic with his wife (Jane Marken) and daughter Henriette (SylviaBataille) with the daughter's foppish paramour Anatole (Paul Temps)in tow. The arrival of the city folk is met with contempt by therural locals (“Parisians are like germs!”) but contempt turnsinto passion once two amorous young men, Henri (Georges D'Arnoux) andRudolphe (Jacques Brunius), get a good long look at the ethereallybeautiful Henriette gliding through the air on a swing.
Ah yes, surely the film's signatureimage. With the camera mounted directly to the swing, Bataille'sbeatific face becomes the fixed center as the sky and countrysidewhirl by in the background, a vertiginous effect that captivates boththe audience and the city girl. She is intoxicated by the sights,sounds and smells of nature: the placid rippling of the Seine, thetrill of hummingbirds, the redolent plant life spurting along theriver banks. She is primed, then, for seduction by the very grabbyhands of Henri and he takes full advantage of the situation withnature as a vocal witness to their love, the sky erupting and theriver swelling in the immediate aftermath of their tryst.
The film maintains its sensuous qualitythroughout its brief 41-minute run time but its abrupt ending(partially explained by Renoir's departure) leaves it feelingsomewhat slight, at least to me, and I find Henri's insistent gropingdespite repeated brushoffs more troubling than I suspect I amsupposed to.
However, even a truncated finalecontributes to the sense that “A Day In The Country” is agossamer creation that has somehow weathered storms and wars anddecades and even abandonment by its creator to survive with all itsluminosity intact. That makes it a particularly precious relic to itsadmirers, and the fact that it's difficult even to label it fully asa Renoir film renders it, in an odd way, one of Renoir's mostimportant films. That it provides his most obvious effort to addressthe works of his father, the legendary impressionist painterPierre-Auguste Renoir, only solidifies its place in the canon.
Video:
The film is presented in its original1.37:1 aspect ratio. This is a very bright sunlit film for the mostpart and it can occasionally be difficult rendering such brightnessin a digital transfer. In general, the image detail is sharp with astrong grainy texture but there are moments when the image gets everso slightly washed out. In outdoor scenes you won't always be able topick out each blade of grass the way you can on some of the sharpesthigh-def transfer, but close-ups look good and the transfer does finejob of conveying the insistent force of nature in this setting.
Audio:
The linear PCM mono track has moreproblems than the image, mostly owing to the film's difficultproduction history. The problems aren't significant, just ahollowness to the audio at times and occasional slight dropoffs.Overall it's still a solid mix, as good as can be expected from thesource material. Optional English subtitles support the French audio.
Extras:
“A Day In The Country” may not runlong, but that hasn't led Criterion to cut the extras short.
First up is an introduction by JeanRenoir from 1962 (6 min.) in which he discusses his early plans foran omnibus film and extols the virtues of plagiarism. Like mostworthwhile directors, he believes the story is not important, onlyhow it is told.
“The Road to 'A Day In The Country'”(2014, 214 min.) is an interview with Renoir scholar ChristopherFaulkner who brings an extraordinary amount of expertise andbackground information to the table. It's difficult to imagine a24-minute interview that packs in more valuable information. I woundup taking a full page of notes but I think it's best to let you enjoythis on your own. I hope Mr. Faulkner is invited back to Criterionmany times, this is just fantastic.
The disc also includes an excerpt (5min.) from a 1979 documentary about producer Pierre Braunberger whichisn't too substantive but still of some interest.
In 1962, the Cinemathèquefrançaise was givenfour-and-a-half hours of outtakes from the filming of “A Day In TheCountry.” A mere 32 years later they produced an edited 89-minutefeature from these unused scenes called “Un tournage a la campagne”(1994). The excerpts were chosen and edited by Alain Fleischer. Thatentire feature has been included here along with a separatecollection of Screen Tests (9 min.) that were also given to theCinemathèque, one ofwhich is a brief snippet of Renoir (who appears briefly in the movieas an innkeeper) mugging for the camera.
As an accompaniment to this impressivefeature Criterion has also included the piece “Renoir At Work” inwhich Christopher Faulkner analyzes some of the outtakes with anemphasis on undermining the long-standing notion (promulgated by theCahiers critics) that Renoir employed a great deal of improvisation.Faulkner argues that the excerpts provide evidence instead ofmeticulous planning at every stage.
The slim foldout insert bookletincludes an essay by film scholar Gilberto Perez.
Film Value:
This modest little film's existence isunlikely enough; its release in beautiful high-def with a bevy ofextras is a reminder that we live in a unique time for cinephiles.
