The Rules of the Game: Rediscover a Masterpiece

 

 

The Rules of the Game (1939)

Directed by Jean Renoir

Gaumont Film Company, 110 minutes, Not-rated.

In French with subtitles.

★★★★★

 

 

 

Timing is everything. The Rules of the Game is a case in point. French auteur Jean Renoir was fresh off two highly acclaimed films, but The Rules of the Game was filmed as war was on the horizon and released several months after Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, the official beginning of World War II.

 

When audiences got a look at the film, it was booed and became a box office dud. Renoir’s pacifism and Communist Party sympathy didn't help, nor did the film’s uncertain fit among movie labels. It is a classic mixed genre, a satire wrapped in a drama, and tied together with a comedy of manners bow. This may have confused viewers, or perhaps a simply weren't in the mood for what could be misunderstood as frothy entertainment.

 

How quickly the worm turns. The Rules of the Game is now seen as not just a superb movie, but as one of the 10 greatest films ever made. Such lists are subject to intense debate, but there are many reasons to see it as a major cinematic accomplishment.

 

It is loosely structured as a drawing room comedy dressed in 1930s’ circumstances and post-Jazz Age mores. Call it a who-is-sleeping-with-whom film. Aviator André Jurieux (Roland Toutain) has just landed at a Paris airfield. Remember that in 1939 the line between pilot and daredevil was a thin one. André is thus surprised and depressed to see his friend Octave (Renoir) there, but not his girlfriend Christine (Nora Gregor).

 

You might think that Christine had reasons to be AWOL; after all, she’s married to Robert (Marcel Dalio), a marquis living in a sprawling country house. But that matters less than you would imagine; Robert knows about Christine and André and has a mistress of his own, Geneviève, though that relationship is fraught, as she too has another lover. The maid, Lisette (Paulette Dubost), is married to the jealous, loutish gamekeeper Schumacher (Gaston Modot), but she is also being pursued by Marceau (Julien Carette), a poacher Schumacher catches in the act. Rather than prosecute him, Robert hires him as a servant. Marceau isn't very good at that role, but it makes his pursuit of Lisette easier. For her part, Christine's problem isn't one man too many, it's her vanity and her propensity for using others as her moods dictate.

 

Such social arrangements usually work better in the abstract than in reality. Everything conspires and builds to an unhappy endings, including a fatal case of mistaken identity. That also may have contributed to the film's less than enthusiastic reception. It's not as if French audiences we're pining for more anxiety.

 

By most accounts, the set of Rules of the Game was this chaotic as the lives of its principles. Famed photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson worked in the production and opined there were no rules in the filming of Rules of the Game. Renoir was said to have adopted a style so laissez-faire that much of the dialogue was improvised on the spot.

 

So why the reassessment? First of all, Renoir and cinematographer Jean Bachelet pioneered in deep-focus camera work. That is, they opened the lens aperture to get the foreground, middle ground, and background in sharp focus throughout. That's standard stuff now, but it wasn't in 1939.

 

More importantly, the messy relationships can be seen as stand-ins for the temper of the times. Gadabouts Lissette and Christine embody leftover recklessness of the Jazz Age, and Christine some of the haughty overconfidence that led to France’s defeat a year later. Schumacher is not only crude, he's Germanically so. André is at turns hysterical and morose, hallmarks of the Depression era and mounting danger. Overall we have a cast and set of circumstances that portend disaster.

 

If you wish, though, you could just see the film as a soap opera involving foolish people headed for a fall. Even when we feel sympathy for a character, but we are seldom tricked into thinking any individual is self-aware enough to tumble towards a blissful fate.

 

Rules of the Game is indeed a masterpiece that should be on the bucket list of any serious cineaste. Put another way, there are reasons why Jean Renoir is considered one of the finest directors in movie history. Be sure to see the rediscovered 110-minute cut of Rules of the Game, not the 85-minute version.

 

Rob Weir