In the spring of 1937, Oskar Serti was called to Hollywood by Metro Goldwin Mayer to shoot a film on the passionate love life of Sandor Ferenczi (Miskolc, 1873 - ?,1933).
After three years of hard work, Serti finally completed his film retracing in its every tiny detail the chequered career of the famous Hungarian pioneer of psychoanalysis.
However, at the preview, the producers refused to distribute a film lasting over seven hours and ordered Oskar Serti to cut it down to two hours and ten minutes at the outside.
Oskar Serti could not bear the idea of having his work amputated like this just because of its length. After the producers had gone, he remained alone in the film theatre to watch his film one last time in the form in which he had devised it. While he was doing this he took the opportunity of photographing the screen with a camera using an exposure time corresponding to the length of his film, after which he destroyed all existing copies of the film.
The next day, he left a copy of the photograph of his film on the producers' desk, indicating that this was the only valid summary of his work.