Partie de campagne (1936) DVD

An adaptation of a story by Guy de Maupassant which tells the tale of a young girl, on an idyllic country picnic, who leaves her family and fiance for a while and embarks on an all to brief romance. Includes discarded takes and screen tests.

Shot on location on the banks of two small tributaries of the Seine, Renoir's sensuous tribute to the countryside - and to the river - has seldom been surpassed. In its bittersweet lyricism, its tenderness and poetic feel for nature, its tolerant satire of bourgeois conventions and its poignant sense of the transience of innocence and love, Partie de campagne seems to distil the essence of all that is most personal of Renoir's art.

Extras * Commentary by film historian Philip Kemp * Additional material from the Cinematheque Francaise including discarded takes (some of which are silent) and silent screen tests * Biography of Jean Renoir