Still Life by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Still Life

Page 106

at the end was to make a film d'ensemble, a film representing a society, a group of persons, almost a whole class, and not a film of personal affairs.’

Filming for exterior scenes set in the country began on February 15th, 1939, in Sologne and outside the Chateau de la Ferté-Saint-Aubin. Renoir later said he chose Sologne because his father Pierre-Auguste Renoir ‘regretted that he had never been able to paint it. How well I understand the sincerity of those regrets before these beautiful landscapes of Sologne, in astonishing colors, of a grace so melancholy yet so gentle.’ Renoir said Sologne's mist ‘took me back to the happy days of my childhood.’

The cast and crew arrived in Sologne between February 6th and 15th. Renoir's son Alain worked as an assistant camera operator and Dido Freire worked as the script girl. Renoir's assistants on the film were Koch, Zwoboda and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Tony Corteggiani was hired as a technical advisor for the rabbit hunting sequence. The cast and crew stayed at Hotel Rat in Lamotte-Beuvron. Heavy rainfall prevented the start of shooting in Sologne for several weeks and Renoir rewrote parts of the script to accommodate the rain. While he finished the script the entire company played cards and bonded. They described it as a happy time in their lives just before the horrors of World War II began. Paulette Dubost said shooting the film was great fun.