Bunuel_Luis_My_Last_Breath

was one in particular about a "magnificent" love scene Jean hadwritten which was in fact three pages of terrible dialogue. I cut it,and substituted a strange scene in which Marchal enters, drops exhaustedinto a chair, takes off his socks, watches Lucia Bosk servehim his soup, and then gives her a little turtle as a present. Ferrywas quite miffed and wrote to the producer complaining about thesocks, the soup, the turtle, and the dialogue, which he claimed hadmore in common with Swiss or Belgian than with French. He evenwanted his name deleted from the credits, which the producer refusedto do. (I still think the scene was far better with the soup and theturtle.)At the same time, I incurred the wrath of Paul Claudel's familybecause certain of his works are shown in a scene next to a pair ofhandcuffs on the police commissioner's desk. Claudel's daughter wrotethe customary scathing letter objecting to my still life, but I was soused to insults that it didn't bother me.On the other hand, my basic problem with La Mort en relardinwas the screenplay, which I somehow just couldn't get right. I'dwake up at two in the morning and write scenes that I'd give toGabriel Arout at dawn so that he could correct my French before Ishot them that same day. Raymond Queneau showed up at one pointand spent two weeks with me trying to help rewrite, but the scriptremained impossible. Queneau had a lovely sense of humor andinfinite tact; he never said he didn't like something or that somethingwasn't good, but always began his criticisms with "I wonder if. . . ."In fact, it was Queneau who made an ingenious addition to the scenewhere Simone Signoret, a whore in a small mining town shaken bystrikes and labor agitation, is doing her shopping in a grocery store.She's buying various necessities-sardines, needles, a bar of soap.Suddenly there's a blare of trumpets and the soldiers arrive to restoreorder, whereupon Signoret pauses, turns back to the grocer, and asksfor four more bars of soap.Signoret posed her fair share of problems, however, because shewas obviously reluctant to do the film, preferring to stay in Rome