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
Review of A Day in the Country
