Renoir made The Golden Coach in three versions-English, French and Italian; ours is the English version. In this eighteenth-century story, Renoir takes as his subject the contrast between theater and life, and the point where they merge, focusing on a commedia dell'arte troupe touring Peru and their temperamental star, Camilla-the luminous Anna Magnani at her comic best. Camilla is courted by three suitors-an actor, a bullfighter and a viceroy-each of whom loves her for something different, and something different than she loves in herself. In the end, she renounces all three for her true love. This sublime comedy of manners is at once a tribute to the commedia dell'arte and to Magnani, who soars above the other actors and is matched in the film by Renoir's own intelligence and expansive humanity. Renoir said, "The desire for civilization was the force that drove me during the making of The Golden Coach," a film inspired, he said, by classical Italy, by Vivaldi, and by Magnani herself.