Finally released in 1946, 10 years after it was shot, Jean Renoir’s Partie de campagne [A Day in the Country] was hailed as one of the great unfinished masterpieces. Since then, this masterly adaptation of a Guy de Maupassant story has grown in reputation to the point where it is counted among Renoir’s best-loved films. In September the BFI brings it to Blu-ray in new digital restoration with special features including an audio commentary by Philip Kemp (2003) and an audio recording of a lecture Jean Renoir gave in 1963 at the BFI’s National Film Theatre.

On a country picnic, a young woman leaves her family and fiancé for a while and succumbs to an all‑too-brief romance. In its bittersweet lyricism, tenderness, poetic feel for nature, tolerant satire of bourgeois conventions and poignant sense of the transience of innocence and love, the film seems to distil the essence of all that is most personal to Renoir’s art.

Partie de campagne was digitised and restored by Les Films du Panthéon with Les Films du Jeudi and La Cinémathèque française, with the support of the CNC and the contribution of the Fonds Culturel Franco-Américain (DGA-MPA-SACEM-WGAW).

Partie de campagne will be released on Blu-ray by the BFI on 11 September 2023 at the RRP of £19.99.

BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES:

• Audio commentary by film historian and critic Philip Kemp (2003)
• Un Tournage à la campagne (1994, 89 mins): a selection of the film’s outtakes held at La Cinémathèque française, compiled by filmmaker Alain Fleischer as part of celebrations for the centenary of Jean Renoir’s birth
• Screen Tests (1936, 9 mins): a selection of screen tests shot in June 1936, assembled by Claudine Kaufmann
• Jean Renoir Lecture (1963, 89 mins): an audio recording of a lecture and Q&A given by Jean Renoir at the BFI’s National Film Theatre
• First pressing only: illustrated booklet with new essays by Barry Nevin and Pasquale Iannone, a biography of Jean Renoir by Philip Kemp, film credits and notes on the special features