La fin du monde was the Heaven's Gate of its place and time. Variety implies that Gance's financiers seized the film and released their own version because they thought he was an irresponsible megalomaniac. Other sources say that upheavals in the French stock market forced the investors to pull the plug. Still, the image of Gance as an egotistical loose cannon is borne out by the film's original French title, which translates as The End of the World, Seen, Heard and Rendered from an Idea by Camille Flammarion, by Abel Gance. Everything about the film communicates Gance's conviction that the world is coming to a political and moral apocalypse, and that his duty is to use his cinematic art to direct the hearts of the world toward spiritual values. The investors must have been shocked to see Gance cast himself in the role of a modern prophet pointing the way to humanity's salvation. The film initially lets us believe that the director is playing Christ, until the camera pulls back and reveals that he's an actor in a Passion Play within the film.