Still Life by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Still Life

Page 116

and ‘Le Jour Se Lève.’ The Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated ‘we are especially anxious to avoid representations of our country, our traditions, and our race that changes its character, lie about it, and deform it through the prism of an artistic individual who is often original but not always sound.’

‘The Marriage of Figaro,’ one of the inspirations for the film, had been banned for similar reasons. After the end of World War II, the 85 minute version of the film was re-released in Paris on September 26th, 1945, and it was banned again.

Renoir said that of all his films, ‘The Rules of the Game’ was the biggest failure at the time of its release. He also said its failure ‘so depressed me that I resolved to either give up the cinema or to leave France.’ During shooting, Renoir was offered the chance to film an adaptation of ‘Tosca’ by Italian producers. He agreed to the deal on July 14th, 1939, and saw it as an opportunity to leave France. Renoir and Carl Koch traveled to Rome on August 10th for pre-production, but had to leave on August 23rd, after the German-Soviet pact made his French citizenship an issue. Koch directed the film instead and Renoir emigrated to Hollywood.

In 1942, during one of the Allied bombings of Boulogne-sur-Seine, the G.M. Film Lab, which housed the original negative of ‘The Rules of the Game,’ was destroyed. In 1946, a print of the