Its failure with the critics, on the other hand, was real; to this day I still think it was undeserved. “An undistinguished knockabout farce,” was the headline in Le Monde, differentiating itself from its more moralistic peers, who raised, especially in their editorials, the question of banning it. It was certainly a comedy, and most of the gags were very obvious, if not vulgar; but there were certain passages of dialogue, in certain scenes, which seem to me, with hindsight, to be the best thing I ever produced. In particular in Corsica, in the long sequence filmed on the slopes of Bavella, where the hero (played by me) shows the little Aurore (nine years old), whom he has just conquered over a Disney tea at Marineland in Bonifacio, around his second home.

“There’s no point in living in Corsica,” she hurled insolently, “if it means living on a bend in the road.”

“To see cars pass,” he (I) replied, “is already to live a little.”

No one had laughed; neither during the screen test, nor at the comic film festival in Montbazon. And yet, and yet, I told myself, never had I reached such heights. Could Shakespeare himself have produced such dialogue? Could he have even imagined it, the sad fool?