The Ways of Love (1950)

The Ways of Love grew from an unfinished film: Jean Renoir's A Day in the Country, of which 46 minutes had been completed before funds ran out. In this French/Italian compendium, Country is combined with Marcel Pagnol's 1933 short subject Jofroi and Roberto Rosselini's 1948 character study The Miracle. It was this last component, the story of an impressionable woman who is seduced by a man whom she thinks is Jesus Christ, that prevented The Ways of Love from being released in the US in 1950. In a landmark court decision, the US Justice Department decreed that The Miracle was not the dire threat against morals that its detractors made it out to be, and permitted the film to be shown in New York. For the record, A Day in the Country is based on a Guy de Maupassant story of unrequited love during a family picnic, while Jofroi tells the tale of a peasant who sells his land--but not the trees on that land. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi