Partie de Campagne

Jean Renoir - 1936
Forty minutes, of charm, of wonder. Renoir's style at this point isn't really the long shot, long take one. He is really pretty analytical, cutting in, and going from person to person. He does use depth, most famously in the scene by the window. But even this scene hardly lasts a few seconds.
This is the most impressionist film I can remember seeing of Renoir's. Two particular shots come to mind; the back and forth (and the low angle still) of the girl on the swing, and that backwards track, a sensational shot, through the rain on the river.
The great joy of this film is partly in that fresh and easy central performance, an almost miraculous mixture of freedom and sadness. And then of course, 'nature'. Shot in incredible, natural light, at once extremely bright and soft. We have dappling... it's really the light of the place, and what a wonder it is. This film is poetic in its montage of the swaying reeds by the river, the flow of the water.. a wonderful dream.
That mixture of real eroticism, natural wishes, conventions, transience, return; perhaps it is on the more sentimental side of Renoir's pictures. With Bataille' central performance, all these traits are put together in a forty mintues of wonder. Eseential.