In 1962, Producer Nicole Stephane acquired all film rights to the novel from Proust's niece. After several abortive attempts, including the cooperation of Harold Pinter who wrote a brilliant screenplay which was never to be filmed, Stephane turned to Peter Brooks. He did not complete the task, which was finally assumed by Volker Schlondorff. The film was produced in Paris in 1984, with Jeremy Irons, an Englishman, as Swann, and Ornella Muti, an Italian, as Odette. Entitled Swann in Love, and based primarily on the material in the "Swann in Love" section of Swann's Way, the film attempts to show twenty-four hours in the life of Swann. To many viewers, Irons proved disappointing. Odette was slightly more convincing. Although Schlondorff did not attempt to recreate Proust, but rather to create a new genre for film, the final result is vastly inferior to Proust's panorama of the end of an age...