sentences:  The following February, it opened in London and Berlin, and in both cities it played for more than a year in exclusive first-run engagements.Because of a technicality in French copyright laws on order of the estate of composer Georges Bizet (who wrote the opera on which the film was based), the film was banned in France until 1981.However, it was permitted to open the 1955 Cannes Film Festival, where for the first time Preminger and Dandridge openly flaunted their relationship.