Partie de campagne (1936) - film review

Monsieur Dufour, his wife Juliette and their daughter Henriette leave their shop in Paris and set out for a day in the country.  On the banks of the Marne, Monsieur Dufour and his employee Anatole go fishing whilst the two women flirt with two boatmen, Rodolphe and Henri.

Often cited as one of Jean Renoir’s best works, Partie de Campagne is a magnificently crafted adaptation of a popular short story by Guy de Maupassant.   Renoir’s treatment of the subject is masterful: the achingly beautiful location heightens the cruel irony of Henrietta’s fate.  Instead of following her natural desire to pursue the man she is drawn to, she allows herself to be shackled, by the bonds of convention and respectability, in a loveless marriage.  The film’s humanity and depth illustrate just why Renoir was so popular with the directors of the Nouvelle Vague of the 1960s who, like Renoir, almost invariably placed characterisation before narrative.

Renoir had originally intended this to be a full-length film, but he abandoned the project owing, it is alleged, to a severe mental block.   In 1946, the film which had been shot ten years earlier was edited into a short film, which was first released in Paris on 18 December 1946.

© James Travers 2006

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