Rules of the Game

Perhaps no film with the possible exception of Citizen Kane has been so universally acclaimed by critics of all stripes and persuasions. It is generally well known that the film was almost lost as a result of the outrage it caused when it was released in France on the brink of World War II. Only painstaking restoration efforts since the war enable us to see it today. He had laid the groundwork of Neorealism with Toni. That he was dissatisfied with the existing order should have come as no surprise after Le Crime de M. All the while, he was developing throughout the decade a unique and barely visible style of long-takes and deep-focus that, as Andrew Sarris suggests, makes life seem to overflow the frame.

Even so, the ferocity of The Rules of the Game coming from the bourgeois son of a highly successful painter caught people off guard. After production started, Renoir was reportedly distressed by the performance of Nora Gregor in the female lead. Marceau has squandered his dream of becoming a servant. Let him have it. Renoir apparently took off in many different directions during the chaotic shoot, and it shows: The supremely talented, supremely flexible Renoir rides his own movie like a wave, thus foreshadowing and inspiring the cinema of Godard, Rivette, and Cassavetes and the great experimental impulses that came alive in the sixties and seventies.

Those famous lines he gave Octave, his own character, about everyone having his or her own reasons, have often been taken for a sweeping judgment of mankind. Renoir once said that one should float through life like a cork over a stream. In The Rules of the Game, every character, from Octave on down, is madly trying to scoop up some water with their hands, only to see it drain through their fingers. How else to respond to people so wrongheadedly convinced that they can control life?

The Rules of the Game (La règle du jeu) () - Rotten Tomatoes

Wim Wenders, Director This film is no small miracle, in my book. Made right before the outbreak of the Second World War, it is full of anticipation of the horrors about to happen. Yet it is rather looking back, showing an old and morose society vanishing in front of our eyes, not just in France but all over the world. Violence is erupting ferociously and randomly, even if the film itself is full of warmth and tenderness.

The Game (mind game)

An incredible lightness of being is carrying us through it and helping us overcome all the bitterness it evokes as well. You just wonder how a camera could have possibly been so weightless, long before the invention of the Steadicam. Rarely has there been a film so void of any prejudice whatsoever. Nothing appears fixed or set. You also have to know that Jean Renoir appears as an actor. Watching him alone is a sheer pleasure. This film is addictive—be warned!

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This magnificent ensemble piece—a movie that Woody Allen, Robert Altman, and Mike Leigh, to name three, are always trying to remake—is as fresh, funny, and poignant as it ever was, and even more mysterious. How did Renoir do it? The Rules of the Game has much overlapping dialogue and very few reverse-angle shots. The camera is endearingly shaky, as if jostled by the mad chases and frantic intrigue; the deep space allows ample room to mix up spouses and lovers, masters and servants, living creatures and automatic dolls, theater and life, truth and lies.

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The leads are fabulously miscast. What to call a sex comedy of manners that turns slapstick and culminates in murder? Is it a tragic farce, a form of melodramatic social satire, a new kind of documentary? Midway through its Paris premiere, the audience started hooting.

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In , boxes of original material were rediscovered and a reconstructed version of the film premiered that year at the Venice Film Festival , with only a minor scene from Renoir's first cut missing. Since then, The Rules of the Game has often been called one of the greatest films in the history of cinema. Numerous film critics and directors have praised it highly, citing it as an inspiration for their own work.

Sensitive hearts, faithful hearts, Who shun love whither it does range, Cease to be so bitter: Is it a crime to change? If Cupid was given wings, Was it not to flitter? She is listening to the broadcast in her Paris apartment while attended to by her maid, Lisette Paulette Dubost. At the estate, Schumacher is policing the grounds and trying to eliminate rabbits.

Before Marceau can escape, Schumacher catches him and begins to escort him from the property when Robert demands to know what is happening. Marceau explains that he can catch rabbits and Robert offers him a job as a servant. Once inside the house, Marceau flirts with Lisette.

At a masquerade ball, various romantic liaisons are made. Schumacher and Marceau, who have both been expelled from the estate after a fight over Lisette, watch Octave and Christine in the greenhouse. They mistake Christine for Lisette because Christine is wearing Lisette's cape and hood. Octave returns to the house for his coat and hat, where Lisette begs him not to leave with Christine.

In the closing moments of the film, Octave and Marceau walk away into the night as Robert brings Schumacher back into the household and explains away the killing as nothing more than an unfortunate accident.

The Rules of the Game: No 20 best arthouse film of all time

Credits adapted from British Film Institute. In the French film industry was booming and Renoir was at the height of his career. All five invested 10, francs into the company and intended to produce two films per year. Griffith and Mary Pickford. On December 8, Georges Cravenne published a press release in Paris-Soir announcing that Renoir and Pagnol were about to sign an agreement to procure a large theatre where they would publicly screen "the films that they would direct from then on.

In May Renoir completed the historical drama La Marseillaise and wanted to make a comedy. After returning from lecturing in London in January Renoir left Paris to work on a script. He told a reporter that his next film would be "A precise description of the bourgeois of our age. Because Renoir wanted to allow the actors to improvise their dialogue, only one-third of the film was scripted and the rest was a detailed outline.

Renoir later said that his "ambition when I made the film was to illustrate this remark: In both the play and the film the interceding friend is named Octave. In both works Octave is a "sad clown" full of self-doubt and self-pity. He was replaced by Roland Toutain. Simon was offered the role of Christine but wanted , francs, which was a third of the film's entire budget. Ledoux was offered the role of Schumacher. He was married to Simon at the time; he declined when her salary request was denied and instead took a role in Maurice Tourneur 's Volpone.

He was replaced by Gaston Modot. Years later Dalio asked Renoir why he had been cast after having typically played burlesque or traitorous roles. Francois suggested newly famous stage actress Michele Alfa for the role of Christine, and Renoir went with his wife Marguerite and Zwobada to see her perform in a play. Renoir became friends with Gregor and her husband, getting to know them over several dinners in Paris.

Renoir said they were "in a state of great disarray. Everything they believed in was collapsing. Zwoboda said Gregor had "that which Renoir loved above all; an incontestable class, a style, the gestures and bearing of a great distinction. Renoir finished casting the remaining roles by late January How well I understand the sincerity of those regrets before these beautiful landscapes of Sologne, in astonishing colors, of a grace so melancholy yet so gentle.

The cast and crew arrived in Sologne between February 6 and Tony Corteggianni was hired as a technical advisor for the rabbit hunting sequence. The delays caused Pierre Renoir to pull out of the film because of prior commitments to stage plays in Paris. Jay visited the set and was unhappy with the slow progress and with Renoir's performance. Christine was initially written as a bored, upper class bourgeois whose main preoccupation was planning parties, but Renoir amended this to accommodate Gregor's acting.

Renoir also cut most of the references to Christine's conductor father Stiller, such as his relationship with the Marquis. The Marquis was initially written as a patron of the arts and music instead of a collector of music boxes. Journalists often visited the set and wrote positively about the production. Renoir finally agreed and left Zwobada, Cortegganni and Cartier-Bresson in Sologne to shoot B-roll footage of the rabbit hunting sequence. Filming on the sets in Joinville continued at a slow pace.

Renoir would often film fifteen to twenty takes of individual shots and change dialogue on the set, making previous takes useless. On March 16, , Germany invaded Czechoslovakia , breaking the Munich Agreement, [47] which caused the French Army to start mobilizing in anticipation of a coming war. Shortly afterwards, several of the film's electricians and technicians left to join the army.

During filming, Renoir became disappointed by Gregor's performance. Renoir offered to replace himself with Michel Simon, but Jay refused because two-thirds of the film had already been shot.

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Jay asked Renoir to instead remove Octave's scenes, which had not yet been shot. Renoir refused, [51] and throughout shooting he added new scenes for Octave. Renoir continued shooting additional scenes with some of the actors. The opening scene at the airfield was shot in mid-June at the Bourget Airport in the middle of the night with whatever extras they could find.

Despite beginning the shoot in love with Gregor, Renoir's infatuation remained unrequited. During the film's production he ended his relationship with his common-law wife Marguerite and began another with script girl Dido Freire, whom he had known for twelve years and was Alain Renoir's nanny. Renoir edited the film while shooting; [33] his first cut was three hours long.