Still Life by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Still Life

Page 115

Margurite Renoir and Zwoboda to cut the scenes that the audience had found the most upsetting. Renoir said he mostly cut his own scenes or dialogue ‘as though I were ashamed, after this rebuff, of showing myself on the screen.’ He later defended his own performance as being awkward, the way Octave should have been. The reduction in length removed Octave's complexity and completely changed the character's motives at the end of the film. In the 85 minute version, Octave does not intend to run away with Christine and merely lends André his coat for warmth before sending him out to the greenhouse. The omission of this item in the plot resulted in the misconception that the film has an alternative ending. This was first reported by Roger Manvell after he watched it at its London premiere in 1946. At one point, Jean Jay told Renoir to restore the film to the 100 minute version ’to avoid commercial disaster,’ but none of the shorter versions improved its reception or attendance figures. When asked about the film's poor reception with audience members, Renoir said ‘I thought I was gentle with them, and they thought I was laughing at them.’

In October 1939 ‘The Rules of the Game’ officially was banned in France for being ‘depressing, morbid, immoral, and having an undesirable influence over the young.’ Other films that were similarly banned included Marcel Carné's ‘Le Quai des Brumes’