The USA release was cut by 9 minutes due to censorship, and retitled "Obsession". The advertising tagline for this version was misleading: "In the tradition of Lolita...". The storyline, originally from Balzac's French novel, was not about a doomed "obsession" as in Stanley Kubrick's "Lolita", but about a love that knows no boundaries and one that rejuvenates the older painter. The American distributor who re-cut it didn't understand the intention of the film, and mistakenly saw it as prurient. This censored version currently (2020) circulates on streaming services such as Amazon Prime.