Sylvia Bataille Movies

The Ways of Love grew from an unfinished film: Jean Renoir's A Day in the Country, of which 46 minutes had been completed before funds ran out. In this French/Italian compendium, Country is combined with Marcel Pagnol's 1933 short subject Jofroi and Roberto Rosselini's 1948 character study The Miracle. It was this last component, the story of an impressionable woman who is seduced by a man whom she thinks is Jesus Christ, that prevented The Ways of Love from being released in the US in 1950. In a landmark court decision, the US Justice Department decreed that The Miracle was not the dire threat against morals that its detractors made it out to be, and permitted the film to be shown in New York. For the record, A Day in the Country is based on a Guy de Maupassant story of unrequited love during a family picnic, while Jofroi tells the tale of a peasant who sells his land--but not the trees on that land. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Jean Renoir's A Day in the Country is a short and semisweet romantic vignette based on a story by Guy de Maupassant. A group of family members spend a day away from the city in the French countryside. While the men go off to fish, the mother (Jeanne Marken) has a harmless flirtation with a rural "rake," while the daughter (Sylvia Bataille) has a more serious liaison with a handsome young man (George Saint-Saens). Fourteen years later, the same family vacations at the same spot. The handsome stranger returns, hoping to renew his affair with the daughter; unfortunately, the girl is now married to a dull, insensitive jerk. The two former lovers ponder what might have been, then the family heads back to the city. A Day in the Country currently exists only in a 40-minute version; Renoir had planned to film scenes depicting what happened in the years between the two holidays, but he closed down production due to an acute "creative block." For this reason, although the film was shot in 1936, it wasn't released to theaters until ten years later. For its American distribution, Day in the Country was bundled together with two other short European films -- Joifroi and the controversial The Miracle -- as the portmanteau film The Ways of Love. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Based on a stage play by D'Hennequin and Veber, the saucy 1936 sex farce Avez Vous N'Avez Rien a Declarer? was released in the US five years later as Confessions of a Newlywed. The original title translates as Having You Nothing to Declare, a double-entendre referring to the sexual prowess-or lack thereof-of entymologist Pierre Brasseur. Overly preoccupied with his work, Brasseur seems unwilling or unable to satisfy the carnal urges of his young bride Sylvia Battalie. When a week passes without marital consummation, Brasseur asks Battalie's scientist father Raimu for advice. A subsequent visit to a psychiatrist and a nightclub, followed by a tete-a-tete with Brasseur's former lover (Germaine Aussey), seems to straighten things out (if that is the appropriate choice of words), while the connubial progress of the newlyweds is paralleled (and gently mocked) by a pair of insects in Brasseur's laboratory. Confessions of a Newlywed was directed by Leo Joannon, who seems far more at home with this sort of material than he would with Laurel & Hardy in 1951's Atoll K. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Jean Renoir was the director of The Crime of Monsieur Lange, but this French film might just as well have been made in Hollywood by Frank Capra. The titular Lange (Rene Lefevre) is an author of wild west novels. When the owner of the company that publishes Lange's works absconds with the company funds, Lange rallies the employees together to create their own publishing house. The publisher returns, disguised as a priest, and demands a share of the profits. Lange responds by killing the bounder. The grateful employees help Lange to escape prosecution, allowing him to leave the country with his lovely fiancee (Florelle). Jacques Prevert adapted the screenplay of The Crime of Monsieur Lange from a story by Renoir and Jean Castanier. Stage actor Jules Berry makes his film debut in the role of the shady publisher. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi