La règle du jeu (1939)
(The Rules of the Game)
Country: FR
Technical: bw 113m
Director: Jean Renoir
Cast: Marcel Dalio, Nora Gregor, Jean Renoir, Roland Toutain, Gaston Modot, Julien Carette
Synopsis:
In a French château before the war an aviator, a hanger-on and a poacher become embroiled in the sensation-seeking infidelities of mistress and servant.
Review:
Renoir's masterpiece, at least among the critics, who for seventy years voted it into Sight & Sound's top ten, is also something of an oddity. Its significance, standing as it does on the brink of a holocaust, lies in its depiction of a fragile, selfish social order going back to the Second Empire and beyond: everyone, even, or especially, the lower orders, connives at a code that strives above all to keep up the appearance of respectability, defined at one point by the Baron as 'classe'. Whether or not, in retrospect, a show of 'classe' would cut much mustard when confronted with Hitler's Panzers is the moot point. Whereas La grande illusion illustrates the irrelevance of the aristocracy and their 'honour in war' code, La règle du jeu picks at the whole interlocking above-and-below-stairs social edifice. What makes for oddity is Renoir's determination to turn something tragic and comic at the same time, which leads to this on the one hand theatrical 'divertissement' via Beaumarchais, and on the other the film's danse macabre final act. Contemporary audiences hated it, Renoir had to cut it to bits, and so inevitably it grew to become first 'film à clef' legend and then classic. What is certain is that it reveals itself differently on successive viewings.
(The Rules of the Game)
Country: FR
Technical: bw 113m
Director: Jean Renoir
Cast: Marcel Dalio, Nora Gregor, Jean Renoir, Roland Toutain, Gaston Modot, Julien Carette
Synopsis:
In a French château before the war an aviator, a hanger-on and a poacher become embroiled in the sensation-seeking infidelities of mistress and servant.
Review:
Renoir's masterpiece, at least among the critics, who for seventy years voted it into Sight & Sound's top ten, is also something of an oddity. Its significance, standing as it does on the brink of a holocaust, lies in its depiction of a fragile, selfish social order going back to the Second Empire and beyond: everyone, even, or especially, the lower orders, connives at a code that strives above all to keep up the appearance of respectability, defined at one point by the Baron as 'classe'. Whether or not, in retrospect, a show of 'classe' would cut much mustard when confronted with Hitler's Panzers is the moot point. Whereas La grande illusion illustrates the irrelevance of the aristocracy and their 'honour in war' code, La règle du jeu picks at the whole interlocking above-and-below-stairs social edifice. What makes for oddity is Renoir's determination to turn something tragic and comic at the same time, which leads to this on the one hand theatrical 'divertissement' via Beaumarchais, and on the other the film's danse macabre final act. Contemporary audiences hated it, Renoir had to cut it to bits, and so inevitably it grew to become first 'film à clef' legend and then classic. What is certain is that it reveals itself differently on successive viewings.
(The Rules of the Game)
Country: FR
Technical: bw 113m
Director: Jean Renoir
Cast: Marcel Dalio, Nora Gregor, Jean Renoir, Roland Toutain, Gaston Modot, Julien Carette
Synopsis:
In a French château before the war an aviator, a hanger-on and a poacher become embroiled in the sensation-seeking infidelities of mistress and servant.
Review:
Renoir's masterpiece, at least among the critics, who for seventy years voted it into Sight & Sound's top ten, is also something of an oddity. Its significance, standing as it does on the brink of a holocaust, lies in its depiction of a fragile, selfish social order going back to the Second Empire and beyond: everyone, even, or especially, the lower orders, connives at a code that strives above all to keep up the appearance of respectability, defined at one point by the Baron as 'classe'. Whether or not, in retrospect, a show of 'classe' would cut much mustard when confronted with Hitler's Panzers is the moot point. Whereas La grande illusion illustrates the irrelevance of the aristocracy and their 'honour in war' code, La règle du jeu picks at the whole interlocking above-and-below-stairs social edifice. What makes for oddity is Renoir's determination to turn something tragic and comic at the same time, which leads to this on the one hand theatrical 'divertissement' via Beaumarchais, and on the other the film's danse macabre final act. Contemporary audiences hated it, Renoir had to cut it to bits, and so inevitably it grew to become first 'film à clef' legend and then classic. What is certain is that it reveals itself differently on successive viewings.