In Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, an austere city scientist is seduced by a country girl. In this scene, the protagonist, all stiff in his suit, has lost his way and stumbles upon the young woman. Attracted by her singing and the moving foliage, he finds himself in a voyeuristic position as she emerges from her verdant setting, her nudity partially masked by foliage, and throws herself into the water. A close-up shot expresses the character’s impulses as he is torn between proper social conduct and being seduced by this Edenic apparition. It also evokes the sensations of the bather who is enjoying the coolness of the water on this visibly hot summer day. The man begins by walking away before accepting the young woman's invitation to accompany him. Suddenly the camera abandons the characters and a slow panning shot over the surrounding landscape reveals a shepherd. At the sound of his flute, which sounds a bit like a signal, the classical narrative pattern is interrupted: the characters disappear from the screen, as if absorbed by the nature into which they merge. The sex scene is then morphed by a succession of shots on the river evoking pure sensations - the rhythm of the increasingly close-up shots of the rushing water and the stones in the river, which are supposed to signify the climax of the pleasure, gradually slowing down. Slowly we find wider shots of the river and its shoreline.
The cutaway of the insect placed on a flower, which evokes nature in the raw, is an allusion to the scientist's speciality - artificial inception. The music, a little naive and almost childish at the beginning of the sequence, mixes with the sound of harp and flute, evoking pastoral life, as the shepherd demiurge approaches. It then expands into a symphony to elaborate on the metaphor. This flow of sensations is addressed to the viewer in a way that is disconnected from that which the characters are experiencing. If Renoir chooses, instead of a love scene, a pantheistic and impressionistic evocation of nature, it is not only out of modesty. It is also to evoke painting, that of Manet (the choice of the film’s title testifies to this), and that of his father: the shots are sometimes similar to canvases, with subtle shades of green on which notes stand out: the white of the stilted professor's suit, the very bright red of the young woman's dress, the pink of a hyacinth.
Comment
In Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, an austere city scientist is seduced by a country girl. In this scene, the protagonist, all stiff in his suit, has lost his way and stumbles upon the young woman. Attracted by her singing and the moving foliage, he finds himself in a voyeuristic position as she emerges from her verdant setting, her nudity partially masked by foliage, and throws herself into the water. A close-up shot expresses the character’s impulses as he is torn between proper social conduct and being seduced by this Edenic apparition. It also evokes the sensations of the bather who is enjoying the coolness of the water on this visibly hot summer day. The man begins by walking away before accepting the young woman's invitation to accompany him. Suddenly the camera abandons the characters and a slow panning shot over the surrounding landscape reveals a shepherd. At the sound of his flute, which sounds a bit like a signal, the classical narrative pattern is interrupted: the characters disappear from the screen, as if absorbed by the nature into which they merge. The sex scene is then morphed by a succession of shots on the river evoking pure sensations - the rhythm of the increasingly close-up shots of the rushing water and the stones in the river, which are supposed to signify the climax of the pleasure, gradually slowing down. Slowly we find wider shots of the river and its shoreline.
The cutaway of the insect placed on a flower, which evokes nature in the raw, is an allusion to the scientist's speciality - artificial inception. The music, a little naive and almost childish at the beginning of the sequence, mixes with the sound of harp and flute, evoking pastoral life, as the shepherd demiurge approaches. It then expands into a symphony to elaborate on the metaphor. This flow of sensations is addressed to the viewer in a way that is disconnected from that which the characters are experiencing. If Renoir chooses, instead of a love scene, a pantheistic and impressionistic evocation of nature, it is not only out of modesty. It is also to evoke painting, that of Manet (the choice of the film’s title testifies to this), and that of his father: the shots are sometimes similar to canvases, with subtle shades of green on which notes stand out: the white of the stilted professor's suit, the very bright red of the young woman's dress, the pink of a hyacinth.