An extraordinarily beautiful and compelling film by Jean Renoir, the virtues of A Day In The Country are even more remarkable when one considers that it is an interrupted, unfinished work. The portion that is present sings with thematic and visual lyricism, suffused with the rhythms of nature that abound in its location setting, and also the sensuous tone and content of its story, itself a romantic idyll; and to this, Renoir adds an element of interaction with music that was amazingly sophisticated in a 1936 movie; and it would have been fascinating to have seen how the intended middle section of the movie made use of these elements. Alas, the very setting that was to set the visual tone for this movie also doomed it at the time -- when he started shooting it in July of 1936, Renoir intended A Day In The Country to be a longer, more complex film, but a series of rain storms delayed shooting until he was finally obligated to put the movie aside, unfinished. He moved on to his next project -- La Vie Est a Nous -- and the existing material languished until a decade later, when the producer, Pierre Braunberger, retrieved and released it. The movie still developed a worldwide following, even in this truncated form. Its status was further confirmed when the British Film Institute released a DVD edition in 2007 that contained all manner of supplementary materials, including surviving outtakes and additional footage.