If ever the “auteur theory” deserved to be invoked, it should be in defense of Jean Renoir's later films.. All of his films are suffused with wisdom and a vivid sense of life-in-process. At the time of its release in France, in 1959, Picnic on the Grass gathered this notice from Le Monde critic Louis Marcorelles: “Jean Renoir's new film marks a return to an earlier manner, that of his Boudu Sauve des Eaux and Toni of the early 1930s. Produced by his own company, financed out of the income of his recently reissued La Grande Illusion, the new film was shot in color at Cagnes, in the south of France. Some scenes were filmed at Les Collettes, the house where Auguste Renoir spent his last years. Entirely Renoir's own invention, the film is basically a morality play which puts in question the values of contemporary society. A scientist (Paul Meurisse), preaching the cause of artifical insemination, finds a young and willing collaborator in a peasant girl, Nenette (Catherine Rouvel). Though planning a rich marriage, the scientist abandons his engagement and his scientific detachment when, catching sight one day of Nenette bathing naked, ‘he is invaded,' in Renoir's words, ‘by far from scientific emotions.' Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe (its title is borrowed from Manet's painting) seems like a double pilgrimage on the part of its creator: a return to his own family background, and to his early career in the French cinema.”