Reception
The film received a disastrous reception from audiences and critics alike. Contemporary critic Philippe Soupault described it as "portentously naive" and "blatantly unrealistic". Director Abel Gance himself referred to the film as "an abortive work" ruined by the producer taking the film away from him so he could edit it himself.
The lack of success of End of the World forced Gance to turn to more conventional projects in order to continue work as a filmmaker.
Read more about this topic: End Of The World (1931 Film)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)