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Rating: The thousand post-production troubles have made it one of the most unfortunate films in cinema history.
Released in 1939, on the eve of the war, it practically had no success; it was later cut – reducing the duration from 113 minutes to 85 – and then withdrawn from distribution; German censorship banned its projection during the years of occupation; the negative was even destroyed during a bombing.
The fortune of The Rules of the Game began late, twenty years after its release, when some restorers, guided and advised by Renoir himself, managed to reconstruct a version faithful, as much as possible, to the original. This version, screened at the Venice Festival in 1959, finally brought the work to prominence, decreeing it a success especially among the young critics and directors of the emerging Nouvelle Vague.
The Rules of the Game became a cornerstone, a cult and reference work.
Revisited today, now an undisputed classic, The Rules of the Game appears not only a masterpiece in every respect but also and above all a film of extraordinary modernity. A seminal film like few others, yet aged magnificently, a source of inspiration for a vast portion of subsequent cinema that added little or nothing to the qualities and intuitions of the original. The great choral comedies, the social frescoes, the humorous and cruel representations of a society or a social class, and all the Altmans of cinema originate from here, from this small and initially scorned "merry drama" written and directed by Jean Renoir.
The modernity appears all the more incredible if one considers how classic, even "archaeological," were the references that inspired the director: mainly names from the French literary tradition of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Beaumarchais, De Musset, Marivaux, Feydeau, Labiche. It is the great, fascinating paradox of The Rules of the Game: the most modern pre-war film, in sensitivity and form, of French cinema, was intended to be nothing more than a divertissement, a cinematic reworking of theatrical and literary themes as old as tradition.
Indeed, the carousel of loves and betrayals set in motion by these characters is pure pochade treated with the frantic rhythms of vaudeville. The setting is the country estate of Marquis Chesnaye, who has invited several guests for a hunting trip. At the center of the carousel is Christine, the marquis's wife, who is loved by the aviator André and, secretly, by the old friend Octave. The marquis, in turn, has a lover, Geneviève.
As in a game of mirrors, the servants experience similar sentimental intrigues: at the center here is Lisette, Christine's personal maid, married to the Alsatian gamekeeper Schumacher and desired by the new servant Marceau. The "separation" of the characters into two distinct systems according to social position (the upper and lower classes) is pure Shakespeare, pure tradition. But the two levels will have an unexpected point of contact in the tragic finale, when a murder momentarily disrupts the mechanism of deceit and hypocrisy.
Why, despite the so "traditional" cultural references that make up its inspiration, is The Rules of the Game such a modern film? Because it describes a world made of conventions, references, values now destined for twilight (World War II was beginning), with the cruelty and nostalgia of those perfectly aware of their end. It's not so much the very few "direct" historical references that are significant – though it's noteworthy that a character like Schumacher, an Alsatian with a mania for order and discipline, whom everyone insists on francifying his name to Sciumascièr, is the true detonator of the final tragedy – but rather the "picture" as a whole.
These rich bourgeois and aristocrats who bustle and chase in their carousel of sentimental intrigues while always keeping a smile on their lips and flaunting good manners with hypocritical adherence to role (because that's what the rules of the game dictate) are figurines of an old world for which Renoir has staged a final, sepulchral vaudeville. They are nothing more, in their way, than puppets, marionettes, mechanical objects identical to those collected by the marquis and on which the camera lingers insistently.
In fact, not even the looming tragedy – the final murder – really manages to upset the balance. The host gives a token speech, everyone returns in good order to the villa, the game can resume. But it's not a reconciliation, but rather a stubborn refusal of reality that has the taste of defeat and ultimately of death. And the only characters to escape this fate will not be women like Christine and Lisette – who after some attempts to find their individuality, end up returning to their social roles – but probably the "outsiders," like Octave, not coincidentally played by Jean Renoir himself, who bitterly professes himself "a failure, a good-for-nothing, a parasite".
The representation carried out by the director is critical, not mocking. In his gaze, there isn't the complacency of the cynic; instead, there is perhaps the dry cruelty of someone observing reality without too many illusions; and nostalgia, ultimately the affection, for a world from which he himself comes. With all their limitations and hypocrisies, these figurines, so wonderfully outlined, never inspire us with contempt. Even the character of the hypocritical and adulterous marquis, who should be the perfect representative of the decadent aristocracy, appears weak, likable, never truly despicable.
Certainly, this splendid fresco would never have had the strength it does if it weren't supported by a production so skillful and refined, itself astonishingly modern. Two years before Citizen Kane, Renoir already used depth of field as well as dizzying long takes, revolutionizing cinematic technique without the ostentation of Welles but in a more subtle and underground way.
The result is a narration of exceptional fluidity, with the camera pausing on a group of characters, then detaching, crossing the room, pausing on other characters, and so on, «transforming –, in the words of Jacques Lourcelles, – a stage set into a set of spaces where an entire society parades like a masquerade». Form and content merge in unsurpassed harmony, the fluidity of the staging reflects the fluidity of feelings and human relationships. This is also why The Rules of the Game is a masterpiece and a film of prodigious modernity, and this is also why it deserves to be seen and reviewed even today.
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