In 1946, Ingrid Bergman asked Renoir to make a film for her. It took ten years for him to find the proper vehicle, the "fantasie musicale" Elena and Her Men, a story about the power of love and the folly of patriotism. Set in the heyday of Auguste Renoir, and designed "like a series of popular prints" (Renoir), it tells of a Polish countess who is caught between her particular passion for men with promise-currently, General Rollan, played by Jean Marais-and her love for the general's ambitious secretary (Mel Ferrer). Elena was not popularly received-"I do not think the modern world is ready to hold intimate conversation with Venus" was Renoir's explanation-but was championed by the Cahiers du cinéma critics including Truffaut, who saw in it "a rediscovery of cinema," and Godard, who held nothing back: "If (Elena) is the French film par excellence, it is because it is the most intelligent film in the world....To be sure of living, one must be sure of loving. And to be sure of loving, one must be sure of dying. This is what Elena discovers in the arms of men. This is the strange and hard moral of this modern fable disguised as comic opera."