in time for their oyster dinners. These he has to consume in a hurry, one after the other, in order to be on time, albeit a bit green around the gills, for a secret meeting with the French Resistance. After the war all three men are reunited in the old studio. Cast Joanna Shimkus as Joan McLaine Mel Ferrer as Doctor Sherman Harrison Britt Ekland as Josette Papillon Susan Hampshire as Patricia Robinson Philippe Noiret as Marcel Dutartre-Dubreuil Mark Burns as Geoff Rolling Robert Dhéry as Léonard Eléonore Hirt as Héloïse Dutartre-Dubreuil Lila Kedrova as Madame Olga Dubillard Didier Haudepin as son of the concierge Ophelie Stermann as Simone Gilberte Géniat as the concierge Jany Holt as Marcel's mother Mme Dutartre-Dubreuil René Kolldehoff as Oberleutnant Michel Legrand as Monsieur Grondin Lyne Chardonnet as La fille du bar Production After the success of The Virgin and the Gypsy, Dimitri de Grunwald, who had arranged the finance through his European Consortium, teamed up with Christopher Miles again, who in gratitude agreed to direct ‘A Time for Loving’ as long as a meeting could be arranged with Jean Anouilh to discuss the screenplay. This de Grunwald arranged in the Hotel Provençal in the South of France near where Anouilh lived. This 1930s hotel, in which the bar hosted Scott Fitzgerald where he wrote Tender is the night was to close the following year, and reflected that elusive bygone era which Anouilh was trying to capture. Anouilh agreed to meet Miles at the bar at 5pm the night of Bastille Day 1970 and see if it was possible for him to reconsider some aspects of the screenplay for the modern audience. Miles reports that at 5pm sharp a sixty year old moustached man with gold-rimmed spectacle and a twinkle in his eye shook him by the hand saying in French “Eh bien, I have reread my scenario and I find it enchanting” - so there was little else Miles could say to the great man, but to toast the project, and watch the fireworks from the hotel. In fact Anouilh did help later with some rewriting by improving the interlocking dialogue for some of the sequences, which were needed in a hurry as shooting was to begin in Paris on Pont Alexandre III which had to be closed to the public for filming on the 4th August 1970, a studio built on an existing