The working methods of director Jean Renoir, who was thought to have often used improvisation, were illuminated in 1994 when the Cinémathèque Française released UN TOURNAGE À LA CAMPAGNE, composed of eighty-nine minutes of outtakes from the production of A DAY IN THE COUNTRY. The following video essay, written and narrated by Renoir scholar Christopher Faulkner, examines those outtakes.