Still Life by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Still Life

Page 102

the Munich agreement and the strong possibility of another world war, and wanted to film a ‘happy dream’ to subdue his pessimism. He wrote a synopsis for a film titled ‘Les Millions d'Arlequin,’ which had characters similar to those in ‘The Rules of the Game.’ When conceiving the film, Renoir was inspired by classical French art, such as the works of Pierre de Marivaux, Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais and especially Alfred de Musset's play ‘Les Caprices de Marianne,’ which Renoir initially intended to adapt. NEF first announced the film as an adaptation of it. Renoir later said he never intended to directly adapt ‘Les Caprices de Marianne’ but only to re-read it and other classics of French literature for inspiration.

After returning from lecturing in London in January 1939, Renoir left Paris to work on a script. He told a reporter that his next film would be ‘A precise description of the bourgeois of our age.’ Renoir, Carl Koch and Zwoboda went to Marlotte to work on the script. Because Renoir wanted to allow the actors to improvise their dialogue, only one-third of the film was scripted and the rest was a detailed outline. Renoir later said that his ‘ambition when I made the film was to illustrate this remark: we are dancing on a volcano.’ Renoir called the film a ‘divertissement’ for its use of baroque music and aspects of classical French comedies. Renoir's initial inspiration by ‘Les