The film was entered into the 1967 Cannes Film Festival. It was reportedly jeered at its first screening, but during the second showing, French subtitles in which Molly Bloom described sexual intercourse were seen to have been scrubbed out by a grease pencil, pushing audience sympathies toward Strick who had not been informed of the censorship beforehand. When Strick noticed the deletions during the film's screening, "he stood up and yelled out that this film had been censored", Strick's son David told the "Los Angeles Times". "When I went to the projection room to protest, the committee was waiting for me", Joseph Strick later recalled. "I was forcibly ejected, pushed down the steps and suffered a broken foot. I withdrew the film from Cannes."