A director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it into pieces and makes it again.

Subsequently the original negative of the film was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid. 1984: Lettres d'Amérique (Dido Renoir & Alexander Sesonske eds. " He concluded his memoirs with the words he had often spoken as a child "Wait for me Gabrielle.

His pictures Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greatest films ever made. As a film director and actor he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s.