A Day in the Country

Renoir's forty-minute film, and the rescue of an unfinished shoot ten years later. The source is a short story by Guy de Maupassant. A family comes out from Paris with their daughter to spend a day in the country. Two young men at the riverside inn offer to take the women out in boats, something happens that afternoon, and then life continues from where it left off. It was shot in the summer of 1936 and stalled because of rain. Renoir waited for days, then went back to Paris and left it unfinished; it was only edited and released after the war, in 1946. The rain stayed in the film too: the storm over the river came out of necessity and became its most beautiful passage. Among those helping Renoir on set were Luchino Visconti, Jacques Becker and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Sylvia Bataille plays the young woman. Who it is for: viewers who love French classics and films that say a great deal in a short time. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a whole. It is unfinished; two title cards cover the missing sections and those gaps are felt.