Who knows were the river flows… Partie de Campagne (1936), on BFI Blu-ray now

Everyone ought to live life like a cork on a stream…From time to time, you make a hard turn to the left or to the right, but always in the direction of the current. Pierre-Auguste Renoir, painter and father.

 

The mid- to late thirties were a purple patch for Jean Renoir who directed or was involved in film’s that addressed class and left if centre politics with some skill and a restraint that left audiences to join their own dots. It’s very popular of the modern “right”, especially say in the US, to attack films for a heavy handed carrying of The Message but that reductionist approach just doesn’t apply to a work as subtle and as lovely to look at as this. After all, you can take what you like from Renoir’s film, and we don’t get to fully understand what may or may not have happened until the very end or even then.

It could be a film about duty and it could be a film about lost opportunities but you can decide for yourself. Why the film remained uncompleted remained a mystery to me until this release with Barry Nevin, Renoir’s biographer explaining that it was more of a miracle that anything was shot at all with firstly major delayed by massive studio strikes followed by heavy rainfall during June and July which restricted the shoot to just twenty-two days over the course of seven weeks. By this time the director had to move onto his next project to direct Les Bas-fonds. Such is the price of success.

 

That so much was achieved so quickly is largely down to Renoir’s crew and cast being packed with familiar collaborators: producer Pierre Braunberger had previously backed three films by Renoir; Marcel Lucien had worked as a cameraman on La Nuit du carrefour and Boudu sauvé des eaux (both 1932); and Claude Renoir (Jean’s nephew) had been cinematographer on Toni (1935). The film’s eventual emergence, ten years later, was also down to two further key collaborators, Renoir’s long-time editor and companion, Marguerite Houllé. Marguerite, who produced a new cut whilst composer Joseph Kosma who has also written scores for La Grande illusion, La Marseillaise, La Bête humaine and La Règle du jeu (1939) – also out now on wonderful BFI Blu-ray -  actress Sylvia Bataille  (Henriette) considered the newly edited footage un-screen-able and yet ‘when Kosma composed his great score for it, the entire film came together flawlessly ... It was a complete surprise’.

Sylvia Bataille and Georges d’Arnoux

 

It has to be said that the cast were also pretty flawless with Bataille the centre of things, a beauty who could so easily escape her destiny of working in and marrying into her Parisian Father M Dufour’s (André Gabriello) hardware merchant business. The film is based on a short story by one of my favourite French “realists” Guy de Maupassant published in 1881 (set in 1860 during the reign of Emperor Napoleon III) and offering a sharp shock of bitter fate for the perpetually disaffected ranks of Third Republic cognoscenti. 

Dufour takes his family and his clerk, Anatole (Paul Temps), who, despite his dishevelment is Dufour’s pick for his daughter’s hand, into the countryside where they stop at an inn run by a manager played by Jean Renoir. Two young men, Henri (Georges d’Arnoux) and Rodolphe (Jacques Brunius), are bewitched watching Henriette and her mother (Jane Marken) on the swings and resolve to try their luck. All innocent fun but things get rather more serious when the two couples head out on the water… just a simple day in the country, what could be less innocuous. 

Renoir’s career was notable for his fascination with waterways and, in addition to The River (1951), he also directed his first feature, La Fille de l’eau (1925), just a few kilometres away in Marlotte from Partie’s location on the banks of the Loing and the Essonne rivers some way out from Paris. The river is life, its unpredictable and yet it can rush us to our destiny, it swirls with emotional depth and you can run aground in the shallows, marooned on shore out of options. The trees at the water’s edge can bind lovers together but they can also hide and confuse. As much as the river is present, the dense foliage surrounding the main characters suggests the complexity or their seemingly simple life choices.

Backgrounds are as important as foregrounds. Flowers, faces and mountains are not just placed side by side. They constitute a collection of elements all rolled into one, amalgamated by a love stronger than their differences. Jean discussing Auguste 

I could go on, but for just 40 minutes, this film is a mini masterpiece of supple narrative and meaning and, as with father so with son, the backgrounds are densely realised with the players blurring ever so slightly into the context. Now, it’s bad enough me being compared to my father – 23 books published – let alone Julian or Sean with John or Stella with Paul (OK, easy that one) but try being young James. I’m not sure how much pressure was on Jean because of his lineage but his work does have that family sensibility and, being in a different medium, stands comparison on the level playing field of talent, innovation and success on his own terms… which brings us back to Stella.

Partie was digitised and restored by Les Films du Panthéon with Les Films du Jeudi and La Cinémathèque française, with the support of the CNC and the contribution of the Fonds Culturel Franco-Américain.

Special features

•             Restored in 2K and presented in High Definition

•             Audio commentary by film historian and critic Philip Kemp (2003)

•             Un Tournage à la campagne (1994, 89 mins): a selection of the film’s outtakes held at La Cinémathèque française, compiled by filmmaker Alain Fleischer as part of celebrations for the centenary of Jean Renoir’s birth

•             Screen Tests (1936, 9 mins): a selection of screen tests shot in June 1936, assembled by Claudine Kaufmann

•             Jean Renoir Lecture (1963, 89 mins): an audio recording of a lecture and Q&A given by Jean Renoir at the BFI’s National Film Theatre

•             Illustrated booklet* with new essays by Barry Nevin and Pasquale Iannone, a biography of Jean Renoir by Philip Kemp, film credits and notes on the special features

If you already love Renoir this is a no brainer… it’s a film that feels like so much more than 40 minutes and a simple tale of love, class and duty. Eternal.

*First pressing only so better get in quick! Order now from the BFI Shop.