Gateway Cinephiles

3-Minute Intro: The Rules of the Game (La Règle du Jeu)

Screened: April 15, 2008
Format: DVD - Criterion (2004)
Selected By: Andrew

It’s difficult to appreciate the venomous controversy that accompanied the 1939 release of Jean Renoir’s tragic farce The Rules of the Game. In France, the film was jeered and denounced, and it allegedly even provoked an arson attempt. When war broke out, it was banned as too demoralizing for French audiences. Decades later and an ocean away, Renoir’s masterpiece seems relatively innocuous, a black comedy about jealous, petty personalities among the aristocracy and their servants. Today, the film’s extraordinary visual artistry and thematic density are what emerge. This is a work to ruminate on, to explore, to revisit again and again.

The son of impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jean Renoir was affiliated with his country’s left-wing Popular Front between the World Wars. It was during this period that Renoir created his most renowned films, such as Grand Illusion and The Human Beast. Following the disaster of The Rules of the Game, the director made numerous films in America, India, and Europe, although he never again matched his 1930s success. The original negative of Rules was destroyed during the war, but in the 1950s the film was painstakingly reconstructed. Its reputation has flourished with time, and it now is regarded as both one of Renoir’s finest, and one of the most outstanding and influential works in cinema history.

The plot is an intricate puzzle box of affection, loyalty, and rivalry. The film flits between the upstairs world of faithless, selfish, cruel aristocrats, and the downstairs world of the equally ill-behaved servants. Overall, however, Renoir’s viewpoint is not judgmental but sardonic and melancholy. Ambling between the two worlds is the director himself as the charming buffoon Octave, easily the film’s most compelling character. Keeping up with the story of The Rules of the Game is a challenge. First time viewers should instead concentrate on Renoir’s use of deep focus and a constantly shifting camera, which capture a dizzying kaleidoscope of interactions. Frequently lauded as one of the finest French-language films of all time, The Rules of the Game may be one the greatest films in any language about social relationships. It is a work that effortlessly captures the complexity, absurdity, and perils of human connection.