Welcome as he (Max Ernst) was at the Eluards and among their friends, he found it impossible to get anything to do. But one day Benjamen Peret, the poet, told him that if he went to the Eldorado Cafe on the Boulevard de Strasbourg he could get work as a film extra... His career in the movies came to an end on the following day, when he absent-mindedly took off his wig during a take...After this, and for nearly two years, he eked out a living in a factory which produced articles de Paris: bracelets and cigarette holders above all.

—Max Ernst Life and Work
John Russell

During this time he produced The Rendezvous of the Friends, friends past, present, and fictional are assembled against a backdrop of mountains above which a solar eclipse is taking place. It is meant to act as a kind of talisman against a society that was indifferent.