A Day in the Country (1936)

 

a.k.a. Partie De Campagne

Director: Jean Renoir

Screenplay: Jean Renoir

Based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant

Cast: Sylvia Bataille as Henriette; Georges D'Arnoux as Henri; Jane Marken as Madame Dufour; André Gabriello as Monsieur Dufour; Jacques B. Brunius as Rodolphe; Paul Temps as Anatole; Gabrielle Fontan as the Grandmother; Jean Renoir as Uncle Poulain; Marguerite Renoir as Waitress

Canon Fodder

 

A family of a Parisian shop-owner - including wife, daughter, mother-in-law and the daughter's fiancée - go for a day in the country. The daughter Henriette (Sylvia Bataille) falls in love with a man, one of two at the inn they go to, and thus begins one of the many pieces of the career of Jean Renoir, a legendary French auteur but also someone who may come off as unexpected to be covered by myself. My taste in idiosyncratic cinema could be stereotypically paint brushed for more stranger fare, but his however is a distinct worldview I admire, a great humane figure in his love for humanity.  His idiosyncrasies are also visible, including the result of his real life, a figure who had to leave in exile from his homeland of France after the Nazi occupation of the country in World War II, eventually returning to there in cinema in 1955 and in-between having gone through the likes of Hollywood and even filming in India for The River (1951).

Before that history, however, came his attempted adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's short story. It was never completed initial during its shooting in 1936, but in 1946, the remaining footage was completed into this short piece. For myself, any work is that is considered "unfinished" is paradoxically that but also not unfinished, simply in mind to the fact that, if released into public access in any form, what is unfinished is only the gaps and holes in the crafted art rather than the finished product you have to adapt to. A Day in the Country itself also feels fully formed, a miraculous fact it had enough footage from its production to tell a succinct story to stand on its own two feet too.

The final result including that, per one of his greatest trademarks, Renoir fully humanised his stories. The narrative for a modern audience does have a plot aspect which may discomfort - two young men wish to go "fishing", to woo the daughter and mother of the Parisian family for a one-off romance, the one who comes off the most lecherous, even if he keeps a finely trimmed moustache he has to mould using a special mask, especially an off-putting figure in the current day. Thankfully, he is reduced to clowning around with the mother, turning into a Pan-like satyr, whilst a romance that will never become complete between Henri (Georges D'Arnoux with his deep brooding eyes) and Henriette will be kindled in the countryside. Said tale, aptly a short story in cinematic form, is told fully and feels its weight. Even in mind to content which may be problematic - where the moment passion strikes, in the middle of the woodland canopies, invokes the action of Henriette resisting Henri at first only to succumb to his passions - you have a the story in itself feels a fully formed and complex. One of a love connecting unexpectedly from a playful seduction, that sequence (or actually, gesture in acting) only an issue because such iconography has been used in cinema in a way that is inherently problematic, whilst everything else in how it begins and where it ends is a real bitter sweet romance. Where the entire scene and the story of Henriette with Henri turns into one of two adults falling in love by accident, with the weight of it Renoir provides more powerful than merely a choice in depiction which has aged.

Everything else is striking, even in mind that a lot of the film is very light in tone, as much to its virtue as well for emotional impact. Renoir's greatest favour is how everything is relaxed and even playfully humorous in his work, in contrast to when he has to be serious and makes those films and scenes powerful. Even an adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (his TV movie project The Testament of Doctor Cordelier (1959)) is light in tone but still takes the material serious in its drama, an obscure title in his career showing his skills in both sides of the emotional coin. A Day in the Country has a perfect title which describes its atmosphere, one in mind to the source material Renoir fleshed out to be sympathetic to his entire cast of characters. Even the father and the husband-to-be, a portly man and a thin fishing obsessed guy who legitimately look to Stan Laurel and Laurel Hardy, are likeably oafs accidentally fishing up boots from the river, with the sense of Renoir caring for them even if playing to a comedy of the pair of goofs. Everyone even if they can be broad is a character to care for in such little time, where eventually the sadness, in the epilogue, means more when Henriette is going to be stuck with the younger man as her husband when Henri and she suddenly have a spark of love that is real.

Contrasting this is how vibrant the film is. Even if Renoir, once he transitioned to it, would embrace colour in all its passionate energy, the use of the natural environment the story is set in is exceptional. It opens up fully, in a brilliant use of deep composition of a scene with fore and background content, when a window is open and we see the countryside in its fullest the first time seeing Henriette and her mother on swings. Nature in the film, the wildlife and the landscape, becomes a magical place which is yet real and accessible, adding to the narrative that, by pure accident, a game of lust between the two male suitors, to trick the men away for them to go boating with the women and seduce them, is stripped away to a real romance between Henriette and Henri as much because the woodland they get to by boat is a place of pure aesthetic beauty. Even if the landscape was as much a cause of the film's production problems, where it rained continuously during shooting¹, it is in itself a character as well as would be the case in later films. It actually evokes Picnic on the Grass (1959), a very odd little film later in his career, a comedy with a satirical edge of a scientist and political figure pushing forth artificial insemination who instead finds love, and emotion, when he meets a peasant girl. It is a film with quirks that you have to adapt to, from a time period dealing with modernity to tradition, but in colour Renoir again dealing with the natural landscape having an incredible power and God-like form which can heighten emotions like love. (Even, in mind to one character playing up as a satyr in A Day in the Country, this is escalated in the later film in having a subplot of an old pagan landmass and unnatural winks which cause stuck up rationalist people to suddenly become freer and loose, all for the better in a sudden mass Dionysian possession).

The success of A Day in the Country, in mind to the inherently fascination with "unfinished" work, is both the luck of having enough substance to be a fully formed narrative, the rain which plagued the original production becoming the change where, cutting forwards in time, the romance briefly found once before cannot be gained back but will be remembered forever. The other aspect is Renoir himself whose talents made sure said story was complete and worthy even if it never properly concludes.

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1) Referred to HERE.