La règle du jeu (1939)

A bourgeois life in France at the onset of World War II, as the rich and their poor servants meet up at a French chateau.

Director:

Jean Renoir

Writers:

Jean Renoir (scenario & dialogue), Carl Koch (collaborator) (as Koch)

Stars:

Marcel Dalio, Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost

4 wins & 2 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Nora Gregor	...	Christine de la Cheyniest (as Nora Grégor)
Paulette Dubost	...	Lisette, sa camériste
Mila Parély	...	Geneviève de Marras
Odette Talazac	...	Madame Charlotte de la Plante
Claire Gérard	...	Madame de la Bruyère
Anne Mayen	...	Jackie, nièce de Christine
Lise Elina	...	Radio-Reporter (as Lise Élina)
Marcel Dalio	...	Marquis Robert de la Cheyniest (as Dalio)
Julien Carette	...	Marceau, le braconnier (as Carette)
Roland Toutain	...	André Jurieux
Gaston Modot	...	Edouard Schumacher, le garde-chasse
Jean Renoir	...	Octave
Pierre Magnier	...	Le général
Eddy Debray	...	Corneille, le majordome
Pierre Nay	...	Monsieur de St. Aubin

Storyline

On the brink of WWII, the record-breaking aviator, André Jurieux, safely lands at a small airport crammed with reporters, only to come face-to-face with his worst fear: the object of his desire, Christine, a blonde noblewoman and wife of the affluent Marquis de la Cheyniest, Robert, is not there to greet him. Intent on winning her back, André accepts his friend Octave's invitation for a lavish hunting weekend at the aristocrat's palatial country estate at La Coliniere, among hand-picked guests and the mansion's servants. However, intrigue, rivalries, and human weaknesses threaten to expose royalty and paupers alike. Who will breach first the unwritten rules of the game?

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Plot Keywords:

bourgeoisie | aviator | fired from the job | class conflict | aristocracy | 

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Taglines:

One of the two or three greatest films ever made in France.

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Genres:

Comedy | Drama

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Did You Know?

Trivia

After the success of La Grande Illusion (1937) and La bête humaine (1938), Jean Renoir and his nephew Claude helped set up their own production company, Les Nouvelles Editions Francaises. This was their first production.

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Goofs

(around 24 min) When Schumacher and the under-gamekeepers find the cat in the rabbit trap, they complain about it. They release it and the cat runs away to their right. Schumacher immediately turns about 75 degrees to his left and shoots into the far distance (his gun is level). From the characters' dialogue, he obviously "killed it" (!).

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Quotes

Un invité: What's on your mind?
Geneviève de Marras: A maxim by Chamfort. It could almost be a precept.
Un invité: What does he say?
Geneviève de Marras: "Love as it exists in society is merely the mingling of two whims and the contact of two skins."

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Alternate Versions

Film historians Jean Gaborit and Jacques Durand salvaged excised and unused footage and created a new longer version, presented at the 1959 Venice Film Festival. Where the original theatrical version was 91 minutes long, the new 1959 version was 106 minutes long, over fifteen minutes longer than the original cut.

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Connections

Referenced in Short Cuts (1993)

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Soundtracks

Tout le long de la Tamise
(uncredited)
Written by Eugene Rosi

User Reviews

Decadence, Love and the Unmoored Nobility

Renoir made a tight little romantic, or rather anti-romantic, comedy. And an angst-ridden, oversensitive, pre-WW2 French Bourgeosie, afraid of its own shadow, saw their worst character flaws fully illuminated exaggerated and satirized. Renoir, being an extremely smart man with keen observational skills and an open mind, simple condensed what he saw into a brilliant, multilinear film and poked fun at himself and each of the ludicrous but oh so human characters he invented. Misinterpreting the film as an attack on upper middle class culture of mid-20th century France, the film was very severely criticized, banned, and, inevitably, recognized as a masterpiece. How French.

Renoir's remarkably light character study of the pre-World War II French upper class entertainingly and humorously lampoons Western ideas of liberty, gentility, idleness and - the big game itself - love. Love, in this film doesn't REALLY have any fixed rules and is shown to consist of everything from a hormonal imbalance to self-loathing and apathetic contempt to an emotion of such power and purity that it could legitimately require the ultimate sacrifice. The concept of liberty, which is sort of an understated backdrop in this film, could be poignantly mistaken for decadence and self-indulgence. And as one might predict, only the least decadent characters (the servants) appear to have goals and some semblance of self-concepts.

Renoir's masterfully written and directed piece was filmed and is set in a time where the vestiges of pre-capitalist "high culture" still had a strong influence on social mobility in France, so 21st century globalists in particular may find the stark and very overtly illusory distinctions between his lordship, his Austrian noblewoman wife and his servants to be quaint but perhaps a little alien. Set against the medium of decadence and directionlessness manifested in spurious and meaningless love/lust/sex/desire the film presents us with a cabaret of likable yet mostly despicable and extremely well-acted archetypes.

La Règle du Jeu presents a tangled web of relationships of every kind set against a social gathering at a country manor presided over by Marcel Dalio's sympathetic (and pathetic) but rather hollow lordship and his exotic lady, an Austrian noble played by Nora Gregor. Renoir himself plays the older Octave, who appears to be the only person at the party who has set himself out of the "the game" - friend to all lover of none. But even this laudable status inevitably breaks down in the tumult of rampaging aimlessness concentrated by the big party. The serving staff, though perhaps more honest and direct about themselves, are an obliquely angled mirror of the bourgeouis house guests in virtually every way. A few cross-class relationships will stick with you and are worth paying special attention to - the extremely condescending ones between the lord and his new domestic (memorably played by Julien Carette) and the lady and her chambermaid (Paulette Dubost) come to mind. In both cases, the servants have the upper hand in nearly every way, but they earn that position by subtly disguising their own wills as sound decision making by their "superiors".

La Règle du Jeu is a beautiful film. The audience is bombarded with continuous action, a very attractive and memorable cast that is in constant motion, gorgeous settings, and extremely well-choreographed and often very long continuous shots in which three or four plots are introduced, climax and close in the space of a few minutes. It deserves its reputation as a great film.

Details

Country:

France

Language:

French German English

Release Date:

9 July 1939 (France)

Also Known As:

The Rules of the Game

Filming Locations:

Aubigny-sur-Nère, Cher, France

Box Office

Budget:

FRF5,500,500 (estimated)

Gross USA:

$273,641

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$273,641

Company Credits

Production Co:

Nouvelles Éditions de Films (NEF)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

110 min 106 min (DVD)

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1