Renoir at Work

Among the most exciting supplements on our new release of Jean Renoir’s classic short A Day in the Country is an eighty-nine-minute compilation of outtakes from the film, titled Un tournage à la campagne, which features revelatory behind-the-scenes footage of Renoir and his actors on the set and provides insight into this master’s working methods. It’s a lot to sort through, of course, so we enlisted Renoir scholar Christopher Faulkner to create a video essay explaining its importance and contents. Here are the first few minutes from Faulkner’s guide, titled Renoir at Work, in which you can see some of the incredible footage—and some of Renoir’s illustrious assistants—from the set.