Credits
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Summary
The aviator André Jurieux returns to France after a record-breaking flight, but
is heart-broken when the woman he loves, Christine de la Chesnaye, is not there to meet
him. His friend, Octave, contrives to have André invited to the Chesnayes’
country mansion for a weekend of hunting and partying. Christine’s husband, Robert,
has also been having a secret affair, and he has invited his mistress, Geneviève,
for the weekend, but only with the intention of ending the affair. Octave, who has
himself loved Christine since she was a girl, warns André that he cannot expect
to win Christine, for that would breach the ‘rules of the game’. Whilst the party
is in full swing, the Chesnayes’ gamekeeper, Schumacher, discovers that his wife, Christine’s
maid, has been flirting with another servant, Marceau, and is determined to kill him...
Review
One of the undisputed all time classics of French cinema, La Règle du Jeu
is also widely regarded as Jean Renoir’s best film, a sublime masterpiece of filmmaking
technique and satirical verve. Alternating between high drama and music hall farce,
it has simultaneously the sophistication of a great work of art and also the sense of
anarchistic fun of a student comic play. Filmed with the eye of a cinematographic
genius, with excellent acting throughout, La Règle du Jeu is a classic in
the truest sense of the word.
The film was intended as a social satire on the class system in France of the 1930s, making fun of both the aristocracy and the working classes, but its incisive wit and provocative study of human nature gives it a timeless quality which makes it relevant to any generation of cinema going audience. One of the most extraordinary characteristics of the film is how it manages to avoid fitting into the conventional genres of cinema. It is neither a farce, drama, romance, tragedy or satire, but it is somehow a combination of all of these at the same time. Some parts of the film are outrageously funny, for example the famous party scene, which quickly degenerates into farce before reaching its tense and dramatic climax. For the most part, the film resembles a tongue-in-cheek satire on bourgeois life, and Renoir’s intense distaste with the High Bourgeoisie is apparent throughout. By portraying the ruling classes as insensitive automata blindly adhering to an unwritten code of honour (la régle du jeu) and incapable of showing genuine emotion, Renoir makes his most damning comment on upper class standards and behaviours. The "he has class" line at the end of the film when one house guest comments on his host’s sang froid is said in praise but Renoir clearly meant something very different. Renoir is no more enamoured of the working classes, whom he presents as subservient menials whose greatest pleasure is to clean the boots of their overlords. Compared with the passionless romantic tangles of their lords and masters, affairs of the heart drive the domestics to throw themselves at each other in a comic fight to the death. Only the sage social parasite Octave (played by Renoir himself) is capable of feeling genuine love, but he, tragically, is the one person who least equipped to win it. The style in which the film is shot is no less unsettling than its content. In contrast to the conventions of the day, Renoir uses techniques which gives his film an almost neo-realist feel – for example, his preference for wide-angled long shots. As a result, the film has a strange naturalistic quality which is almost nearer to a documentary than a theatrical work. The place where this is most apparent is the hunt scene, which culminates in a rapid succession of shocking images of wanton brutality as rabbits and pheasants are slaughtered in front of the camera. The scene, with its raw candour, not only further alienates the spectator from the gentry but prepares us for the film’s shocking ending. In Renoir’s eyes, not only do the aristocracy have no passion in affairs of the heart, they also seem to have scant respect for life – to them, it is all a game. This explains why, when the gamekeeper goes on a killer rampage during the party, the house guests assume it is just part of the entertainment which has been lain on for them. Although La Régle du jeu is now safely acknowledged as one of the greatest films in cinema history, it has certainly had a chequered history. The film was, at the time it was made, one of Renoir’s most ambitious films, costing around five million Francs, but it was a commercial disaster. At its first showing in Paris in July 1939, the film was reviled by the audience and Renoir was forced to make drastic cuts to the film, reducing it to 80 minutes. Released in its new form, the film fared no better – it was condemned by critics and public alike for its scandalous and depressing tone. Under the occupation during World war II, the film was banned, and soon disappeared into obscurity. The film resurfaced in the late 1950s, having been fully restored (under Renoir’s supervision), and following its showing at the Venice film festival in 1959 it was instantly established as one of the genuine masterpieces of world cinema. © James Travers 2001 The first viewing of this film was a shock. It kills rabbits and men equally. The Marlene Dietrich-like heroine towers above her Jewish-looking short aristocrat husband, but he doesn’t care. He has his automata to play with. He shows more sexual excitement showing his singing birds and windup toys than the women he toys with. The servants are also automata who act out their love affairs for the aristocrats who wind them up. The bourgeois are crass and ignorant. The wife of the factory owner can say two sentences without mentioning their factory and thinks pre-Columbian peoples are niggers. The fat lady who plays the piano says let the servants have their fun too. Marcel Proust painted the corruption of French upper class society, but mostly making them all homosexual. There is a big sissy in the film with blond hair and painted eyebrows who wants to know the hairdresser of one of the ladies and regrets that the aviator is so good looking, but alas he likes girls. The fat hero is a bear and moves like one and eventually is in peau d’ours. There is also something of the American screwball comedy in this film. Bringing up Baby shows life at a millionairesse’s Connecticut villa with asinine goings on. I suppose in the midst of the Depression moviegoers liked to see how the very rich live. No wonder they hated this film. It destroys the illusions and daydreams of the poor. There is a large painting in the Rhode Island School of Design of a casino with elegant turn of the century upper classes winning and losing money. This genre of art might have been known to Renoir as the son of a great painter. The scans of the camera over the partygoers look like these nineteenth century genre paintings. What is class? The sycophant cook makes the test whether his patron detects that the white wine is poured over the potatoes while they still are hot. The jaded general tests nobility with how a murder is covered up elegantly, the same way the baroness covers up her love affair with the aviator with an elegant little speech. She is supposed to be Austrian. Sometimes I hear a rather uvular r in her speech which may have meant to be foreign. The poor thing is pitied for being étrangère, as if being French is so admirable. The quatorze juillet song is satirical of patriotism. I don’t know what the chorus line represents, probably something about Jews. A masterpiece, my art teacher taught me, has to have an element of mystery in it. The richness of the symbolism, the fine romantic moments, the realism of the servants’ acting, the ornate décor, the elegance of the speech and politeness in the middle of corruption at a hunting box, which is a British theme, too, brings in elements of the superficial copying of the English gentry again painting the house guests and hosts as artificial baubles. I have viewed it three times and it will entrance me for years to come. Would that my French language skills were adequate to enjoy all the subtle satire in the dialogue.
© Stephen Gross (Providence, Rhode Island, USA) 2009 Write a review for this film... User Comments
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