Still Life by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Still Life

Page 114

crowd too many ideas into 80 minutes of film fare, resulting in confusion.’ According to François Truffaut, the film was very disconcerting to audiences at the time because of its peculiar atmosphere, which explains its commercial failure.

Renoir cut most of his own performance as Octave after the film's negative reception.

While the film received mostly unfavorable reviews, most critics praised the acting, including Renoir's, and only the far right wing press criticized Marcel Dalio's performance. In July 1939 a right wing French newspaper criticized the film for portraying the Jewish Marquis married to the Austrian Christine. The Union Sacrée, a French clerical fascist group, organized demonstrations wherever the film was screened. Renoir was a known pacifist and supporter of the Communist Party, which made him unpopular in the tense weeks before World War II began. Years later Renoir said ‘there was no question of contrivance; my enemies had nothing to do with its failure. At every session I attended I could feel the unanimous disapproval of the audience.’

In the weeks that followed the premiere, Renoir reduced the film's running time from its original 113 minutes to 100 minutes, then to 90 minutes and finally to 85 minutes. He told