Nora Gregor Movies

Now often cited as one of the greatest films ever made, Jean Renoir's La Règle du jeu/Rules of the Game was not warmly received on its original release in 1939: audiences at its opening engagements in Paris were openly hostile, responding to the film with shouts of derision, and distributors cut the movie from 113 minutes to a mere 80. It was banned as morally perilous during the German occupation and the original negative was destroyed during WWII. It wasn't until 1956 that Renoir was able to restore the film to its original length. In retrospect, this reaction seems both puzzling and understandable; at its heart, Rules of the Game is a very moral film about frequently amoral people. A comedy of manners whose wit only occasionally betrays its more serious intentions, it contrasts the romantic entanglements of rich and poor during a weekend at a country estate. André Jurieu (Roland Toutain), a French aviation hero, has fallen in love with Christine de la Chesnaye (Nora Gregor), who is married to wealthy aristocrat Marquis Robert de la Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio). Robert, however, has a mistress of his own, whom he invites to a weekend hunting party at his country home, along with André and his friend Octave (played by Jean Renoir himself). Meanwhile, the hired help have their own game of musical beds going on: a poacher is hired to work as a servant at the estate and immediately makes plans to seduce the gamekeeper's wife, while the gamekeeper recognizes him only as the man who's been trying to steal his rabbits. Among the upper classes, infidelity is not merely accepted but expected; codes are breached not by being unfaithful, but by lacking the courtesy to lie about it in public. The weekend ends in a tragedy that suggests that this way of life may soon be coming to an end. Renoir's witty, acidic screenplay makes none of the characters heroes or villains, and his graceful handling of his cast is well served by his visual style. He tells his story with long, uninterrupted takes using deep focus (cinematographer Jean Bachelet proves a worthy collaborator here), following the action with a subtle rhythm that never calls attention to itself. The sharply-cut hunting sequence makes clear that Renoir avoided more complex editing schemes by choice, believing that long takes created a more lifelike rhythm and reduced the manipulations of over-editing. Rules of the Game uses WWI as an allegory for WWII, and its representation of a vanishing way of life soon became all too true for Renoir himself, who, within a year of the film's release, was forced to leave Europe for the United States.. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Ivor Novello's elegant stage play The Truth Game was the source for MGM's But the Flesh is Weak. C. Aubrey Smith and Robert Montgomery star as Florian and Max, father-and-son fortune hunters whose ethics and integrity wax and wane throughout the picture. Eventually, Florian outsmarts himself and ends up broke and heavily in debt. To save his father from committing suicide, Max agrees to marry wealthy Lady Joan (Heather Thatcher). Will he be saved from this rash act in time by his true love, poor but proud widow Rosine (Nora Gregor)? In cold print, But the Flesh is Weak may seem like a stark tragedy, but is in fact a witty, polished polite comedy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Although His Glorious Night, MGM's 1929 talkie adaptation of Ferenc Molnar's Olympia, proved to be a box-office disaster (a failure chalked up by the studio to the vocal inadequacies of leading man John Gilbert, though this wasn't entirely the case), the studio was still committed to refilming the property in French, Spanish and German-language versions. The French version, Si L'Empereur Savait Ca, starred Andre Luguet, while the Spanish adaptation, Olympia, top-billed José Crespo. Olympia was also the name of the German-language version, which like the French adaptation was directed by Jacques Feyder. This time, Theodor Shall is cast as handsome Lieutenant Kovacs, the sweetheart of the lovely Princess Olympia (Nora Gregor). When the princess' snooty mother breaks up the romance, the embittered Kovacs threatens to tell the world that he has "ruined" the girl (not true!), making her unfit for marriage. To ensure his silence, the Lieutenant is promised a night alone with Olympia, just before the wedding. It is at this point that Kovacs proves he's a gentleman after all by marrying the Princess, which is what he intended to do all along. Olympia was remade in 1960 as A Breath of Scandal. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide