BFI Top 50: The Rules of the Game, Released in 1939, Directed by Jean Renoir

What I know going in

That the film is a famous upstairs-downstairs story.

 

Immediate reaction

I didn’t mention this before the review, but, while I didn’t know much about The Rules of the Game before watching it, I had seen a film heavily inspired by it. That film is Robert Altman’s Gosford Park. Both films concern the divisions between members of the upper and lower classes, the complicated relations between servants and their masters, complicated (and sometimes conflicting) rules of etiquette, and the age when such systems were about to collapse. Comparing the two also helps me pin down some of the problems I had with Altman’s film and why I think Renoir’s film is stronger (controversial opinion, I know). My main issue with Altman’s film was that there were just way too many characters to keep track of, add the myriad of complicated relationships the characters had to each other, and it became a frustrating experience at times. Gosford Park also tossed in a convoluted murder mystery (I’m still trying to figure out how Kelly McDonald knew the murderer was Clive Owen). The Rules of the Game also has lots of characters and a web relationship, but it’s just enough to be manageable and there is no murder plot to muck things up.

 

Just to help myself, I’ll start by plotting out the main characters and how they are all connected. The film starts with pilot AndréJurieux landing in France after a record-breaking trip across the Atlantic. The scene quickly shifts to a lavish Parisian household where Christine (and Austrian ex-pat), her husband Robert, his mistress Geneviéve, their friend Gustave, and maid Lisette are all present. Eventually they all travel to a huge manor out in the countryside to drink, cavort, and hunt. While there they meet Marceau (a poacher who Robert employs), groundskeeper and Lisette’s husband Schumacher, the niece of Christine (Jackie), an old general, and St. Aubin. How do all these people relate to each other? Well the meat of the film is watching how those relations are teased out, how they shift, and how they finally erupt. Initially, André is obsessed with Christine, has misinterpreted friendly affection as signs of attraction, and Robert and Geneviéve realize they can’t continue as lovers. The film goes on in a low-key mode for about 2/3rds of its running time, with the various characters puttering about, trying to stave off the ennui, bickering with each other, and making witty remarks.

 

These scenes are a pleasure to watch, but the film has much more on its mind. While the characters are hunting, Christine spots Robert and Geneviéve embracing and realizes that he has been cheating on her. This sparks the battle royale that will occupy the last third of the film. During an amateur theater show put on by the guests and staff, the main characters explosively deal with the insecurities and jealousies that have been simmering underneath the film up to that point. St. Aubin attempts to go off with Geneviéve, André and Robert fight over who should get to be with Christine, Schumacher chases Marceau around the house with a loaded gun because he’s been flirting with Lissette. The craft in this sequence is outstanding, with Renoir deploying deep focus to create insanely complicated compositions of multiple people fighting, watching fighting, or trying to avoid fighting. My favorite such moment comes when the camera is at ground level watching Marceau and Lisette flirt, and you can just barely see Schumacher running angrily toward them through the window. The finale also has an excellent use of sound, with the noises from the various fights going up and down in volume as the camera jumps around to the different groups.

 

The film ends on a disturbing note, with Schumacher killing André after mistaking him for Octave and Christine for Lisette (the movie sets this misunderstanding up very slyly and has possibly the most tragic coat shuffle in film history). What’s even more disturbing about the ending though, is Robert’s fatalistic attitude to it. He tells everyone that André’s death was an accident, which is closely followed by an ominous march (shown with shadows) back into the house.

 

Further thoughts

The Rules of the Game, like several other films on this list, had a long, tortuous before it was canonized as one of the greatest films of all time. Due to the ease with which we access films today, and the nichefication of everything that’s not a blockbuster, it’s very easy to forget that there was once a time when films could cause protests, be banned by wrongheaded governments, and come to the brink of complete of destruction. All of these happened to Renoir’s film. It was made on the edge of the largest tragedy in human existence, and was met with riots for daring to portray the upperclass as fallible, sometimes infantile, people. It was banned twice, both before and after the war, and its original negative was destroyed during Allied bombing. No one went to bat for the film on its initial release, and the only reason it survives in its current, masterpiece status today is due to the efforts of two intrepid French film technicians, and the subsequent reappraisals by the French New Wave critics on its re-release.

 

Renoir’s film is an invaluable, detailed, realistic, and humane portrait of humans “dancing on a volcano”. In The Rules of the Game there are no heroes and villains, no protagonists or antagonists, and no one that is purely good or evil. There are simply people, bound by a set of rules that allows marital indiscretion, but not extramarital love; witty, self-deprecating jokes, but not serious reflection; and “accidents” but not murder. Renoir’s masterstroke was realizing that we all play by those rules, or at least some version of them, and recognizing that we all deserve a small measure of empathy for it.

 

Why is the film on this list?

The Rules of the Game is the definitive, technically-perfect depiction of an era that would soon be gone forever. For that, it is one of the most important, and greatest, films of all time.