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Partie de campagne (A Day In the Country)

Director: Jean Renoir
Year: 1936
Run-time: 40 min

- You can tell that French film is thriving in 1936 by the fact that a film by Renoir is the worst of the last three on the list.  (Renoir has two 1936 films on the list - and other classics from this year that didn't make the cut.)  That's only really due to its brevity, and the fact that it wasn't properly finished due to extenuating circumstances.  What exists is still pretty excellent - putting the elegant but slight story aside, it's Renoir's ode to the natural world, which never quite came through before due to the bluntness of 1930's cinematography.  In fact, it's the only Renoir film I've seen in which he channels something of his father's eye for natural beauty (a fact he alludes to himself in a later commentary he gave on the film).
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