| Overall Grade: |
C+ |
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| Story: |
B+ |
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|
| Acting: |
C- |
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|
| Direction: |
B- |
|
|
| Visuals: |
A |
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Unfinished masterpiece
by Jamie (movies profile)
Feb 15, 2006
Renoir covers a lot of ground in 41 minutes. Meant to be an adaptation of a short story by Guy de Maupassant, he adds many personal touches to show what a story can’t tell on its own.
Monsieur Dufour (Andre Gabriello), a Parisian shop owner, takes his wife, mother-in-law, daughter, and future son-in-law to spend a day in the countryside. There they meet two men interested in Dufour’s wife and daughter. While Dufour and his son-in-law are fishing, the two young men take Madame Dufour (Jeanne Marken) and Henriette (Sylvia Battaile) on a boat ride and then seduce them in the woods. One year later after having married Anatole, Henriette remembers that day as the only time she was truly in love.
Renoir was clearly influenced by many of his father’s paintings such as The Swing, Dejeuner des Canotiers, Rowers in Chatou, and The Walk. His camerawork reproduced many of the nature scenes in these impressionist masterpieces. The film presents a stunning contrast between country and city life, comparing Dufour’s family with the inn workers, and also shows the connection between innocent youth and nature.
Compared to some of his earlier films, Renoir paid much more attention to detail because the whole story is told by a film only lasts 41 minutes. The film was unfinished when it was produced causing the need to use written summaries of the unfinished parts, but each scene that was shot was carefully planned. Almost the entire film was shot outside. Nature plays a huge role in the story so it was important to fully capture how the characters related (or didn’t relate, in Anatole’s case) to it.
Maybe it was because parts of the film were unfinished, but I didn’t see the mutual love between Henriette and her lover, Henri, in this film. They had a lot in common, such as similar names and a love of nature, but the sex scene in the woods looked more like rape than seduction. Other parts of the film were very thought-provoking, but I wasn’t convinced by the love scene.
I believe that the finished parts of this movie are truly a masterpiece, but there are important parts missing in the unfinished pieces. |
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