PARTIE DE CAMPAGNE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 732, 24 July 1953, Page 18

PARTIE DE CAMPAGNE

(Pantheon-Film Traders) rocky RENOIR’S adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s short story, Partie de Campagne, photographed by his brother Claude, is in many ways a small masterpiece. The setting is a stream in the country near Paris where, in the year 1860, a _ bourgeois ironmonger, his wife, his daughter and her fiancé arrive for a day’s outing. Their picnic on the banks of the stream is interrupted by two young men who are staying at the inn near by and who stcceed in taking the two women boating, while the father and his prospective son- . in-law go fishing. On the river the first of the young men (Jacques Borel) succeeds in con-. quering the affections of the ironmonger’s daughter (Sylvia Bataille), and his companion (Paul Temps) succeeds in similar fashion, but with considerable comic by-play, in overcoming the plump and giggling wife. The sequel to this afternoon of love-making appears in the film’s last sequence, when the first’ of the young men returns some months later to the spot where he had known the few idyllic moments in his dissolute life, and finds the girl also there-but accompanied this time by the clownish fiancé (George Saint-Saens), whom she has by now married. The role of the gross, pompous, but good-natured father is played by the actor Gabriello. The scenes by the river are photographed in a manner that recalls the luminous landscapes of the Impressionist painters. The film is beautifully done, with a nice irony of mood Contrasting with scenes of, alternating tenderness and. rustic comedy. Partie de Campagne is only 4000_feet long, and was left. unfimished by Renoir when he went to America’ during | the wat years: But as it now stands it is to al! intents a rounded work of art, carried out with, a rare purity of design and execution. ra