Filmlog: Un dimanche à la campagne (A Sunday in the Country)
At least half of my favourite films are French. For my money they are the best film-makers.
The Brits, Italians, and Russians are not bad. The Germans, Spanish, and Scandinavians are horrid (except the Norwegians). The civilised French perspective that marks their best movies is what I would call realism with a heart. Something like what Richard Weaver would approve as “sentiment without sentimentality.” Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the French suffered the ravages of modernity so early, but were able to arrest it at a place before it did its worst—not destroying civilisation as thoroughly as in Germany and America. Having the Great War fought mostly on their turf and bleeding them nearly dry would tend to cure them of sentimentality also.
A Sunday in the Country (1984) was created by Bernard Tavernier, who is better known for more lavish, aggressive, and historical productions. This is a quiet, beautiful meditation on old age, family, and the generations. An elderly widower’s children and grandchildren come from the city to spend the day. It is that calm, dignified period a few years before the catastrophe of 1914. Set somewhere in Northern France, it might have been shot by Monet had he been a cameraman. Nothing important happens—only life. The film never fails to give me a peaceful, bittersweet sense of my own loved ones and my own time in this world.
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Wonderful! Dr Wilson. I thought I was the only person who'd seen (or at least remembered) this great film. Your short essay captures it very well: nothing momentous happens. We simply get to experience life in what may be the last days of grace, before the West went to the Hell of modernity. It was such a rich film, I honestly thought I could taste the food they were eating. You feel the pain of loss for the beautiful slowness of life, that we never seem to have anymore. The old gentleman's modest country estate and gardens are what I'd choose, if asked to pick my ideal home. It hits you, later on, that this all takes place directly prior to WWI, and you realise exactly what it is we, the West, lost.
I'll see if Video Vault has a copy and rent it. Thanks for the tip, Dr Wilson.
You are all wrecking my resolve not to buy a TV...
Clyde, you had me until the end. Renoir is sublime!
(By the way, don’t confuse A Sunday in the Country with Picnic in the Grass, a boring production of Jean Renoir, the most over-rated director of all time.)
Manet's Lunch in the Grass is an earlier attempt at Picnic in the Grass but instead of a moving picture is but a still on canvas?
Jean Renoir, movie director of The Southerner, is most over-rated director of all time? Hummnn.....What are you up to now, Professor Wilson?
Randy, I would be interested to know what you like about Renoir?
"The Southerner" is one of the worst films of all time, made by someone who was utterly ignorant of the society and people he was portraying, and who had fled his own bleeding country for safety in Hollywood.
Clyde, point taken about The Southerner, although Faulkner actually drafted one version of that script. Renoir also did Swamp Water a little later, set in Georgia. That's not as bad a movie as its reputation would lead one to think. I'm very fond of Grand Illusion, one of the great pacifist films with the unforgettable Erich von Stroheim, and Rules of the Game with a myriad of memorable moments. However his late color films are the ones that make him immortal: The River, The Golden Coach, French Cancan, etc.
As far as "French" directors go, I don't think anyone else can touch the transplated Max Ophuls and his masterpiece The Earrings of Madame de. Please see this if you have not. And his Lola Montes is nearly as good. Talk about the foolishness of human nature! He captures it beautifully in both.
Dr. Wilson,
Anybody that knows anything about you and anything about "The Southerner" would know that comment # 7 is predictable and for a true patriot like yourself, justified. I am carrying no brief for Renoir or all things Texacan, just thought that may be why you considered him the most over rated director of all time?
I'm entering that time of surveying the turns and twists of my own life––it ought to be a peaceful time of reflection; a time of stability where one can reflect undisturbed by the noise of the world and all its impassioned activities.
I find no correspondence in the moment.
It seems so incongruous to be entering this period of my personal life in such a tumultuous social time; a time of economic and social upheaval. Can anyone doubt the Republic is well past the point of no return?
I think as one gets older one does not seek the sensational but the serene. At this time such a movie would be both welcome and appreciated. It is then that the predictable becomes the only thing that is true remarkable; only the normal seems striking and noteworthy.
I think of those scores of souls who are retired and how they find a profound satisfaction in quietude; in going to the usual place for breakfast, seeing the usual people, saying the usual things and ordering––what else–– "the usual." We've been doing it all our lives, but in old age we do a lot more of it (if we are lucky) and realize, more than ever, the satisfaction and strength we've gotten from such routine all along.
I note in Schumann and in Brahms and in Strauss a simplifying of their music in their later work, especially in form. Even in Stravinsky and even in Schoenberg this can be found. (Schoenberg's dodecaphony seems in some degree a time of ill temper that he outgrew. He once said there is still a lot more great music to be written in C major.)
Indeed! You just can't beat a good tune.
As a youth I was struck by all this simplification of the masters in their later music. It seemed weird. Now it makes sense–––but I can't articulate that sense in words. I can only say I glory in the unremarkable, in the routine––in going to my local Greek restaurant––that's right, we have those things in south Dallas country–– seeing the usual souls there and ordering the usual–––always leaving room for some Baklava.
It's not those new potatoes, fresh garden green beans with fat back bacon, fresh corn and cucumbers from the garden and THE BEST ROAST EVER my mother made on so many Sundays back in those beautiful Kentucky hills I called home (and still do)-––but it will have to do.
I've learned to adapt. I can make Greek salad with Gyros by usual–––but what is going on out there––OUT THERE! Never! Even in old age I can tell the difference between food and poison.
#8. Randy, I admit I was being provocative in saying Renoir was the absolute worst. I understand your point, though I can think of half a dozen early treatments of the Great War that carry more meaning for me than "Grand Illusion." There is a different type of appreciation, I think, between a mere historian like myself and a creative artist such as you. Best wishes, CW
There is something wrong with Renoir but at his best he is a master. La grande illusion is not simply a "treatment of the Great War"; it is a film that approaches, as so films do, the quality of serious art. Boudu sauvé des ondes is a comic masterpiece--another triumph for Michel Simon. La Marseillaise, not often seen, is the film I know of on the French Revolution. As for Partie de Campagne, which I saw once many years ago, I do not know of a more delightful film. For me, it was the film equivalent of the Marriage of Figaro. As for his American ventures, I cannot endure a single one of them, though I think I have seen them all. I don't know whether he lost his talent, was corrupted by Hollywood, or simply sucked into the great Hollywood junk machine. He was always a man of the Left, and his nastiness toward bourgeois convention may be a sign of the deep moral failing which arouses the disgust of good men like Prof. Wilson and makes it very difficult for me to watch his films these days.
Clyde, best wishes to you. It's been a while since we've chatted. Are you at the same email address?
I would not completely trash Renoir's American output. The Southerner, despite its thematic wrongheadedness, is visually impressive.
I am not a fan of opera. I suspect admirers of Renoir are.
I don't think these questions can very well be settled by questions of me and thee or of who is a fan of whom or what. Not to like the Marriage of Figaro is no great matter--it is like the failure to enjoy Homer or Vergil or Shakespeare. Renoir is a far inferior figure, not just to Mozart but to Mozart's librettist, who was the competent if uninspired Italian poet who inaugurated the study of Italian literature in the United States, but if a workman is worthy of his hire, a craftsman is worthy of respect, even if we dislike the man and his beliefs. Even if one personally dislikes Mozart's operas, it is a mistake--and not just an aesthetic one--to acknowledge his success. But, not admiring much in Renoir except his art, I am not much concerned to defend him.
PS Last night I watched Four Faces West, a wonderful, though somewhat trivialized version of Eugene Manlove Rhodes' Paso Por Aqui. Perhaps I'll put up a squib on that. In the meantime, I strongly recommend the film, if only to men who can still admire the demure beauty of Frances Dee, who is obviously in love with her real-life husband Joel McCrae to whom she was married for 57 years. I mentioned this to an 80+ year old friend the other day and he responded that any man married to Frances Dee would find 57 years too short a time. Until seeing this movie, I did not know how true this observation is.
I should have said, "a mistake..not to acknowledge..."
I would suggest Dr. Wilson get a copy of the Swedish film "Under Solen" (Under the Sun) and he will change his view of Swedish films. It is a very gentle and organic film about human relationships and life on the farm.
Great work Mr. Wilson. However why are you so harsh on German movies? I would suggest you "Der Untergang" (The Downfall) so you can change your view on German films. I admit most german films nowadays are soulless but this one is a masterpiece.
Regarding Spanish movies, you´re right, they are awful (not in the good sense).
I watched it over the weekend. Very low key indeed, almost like spying on an ordinary family. It was excellent.