The Rules of the Game (1939)

As France stood precariously on the eve of a second world war, the prescient film maker Jean Renoir took on a decedent, self obsessed culture on the brink of collapse, and created a genera bending satire that is today recognized as one of the greatest films ever made. The Rules of the Game is a comedy of manners, if an unusually subtle and probing one. Renoir took on this classic form because it is through a societies frivolity that some of its most damning defects can be made clear.

This is not to say that The Rules of the Game is either an excessively lite or an excessively dark film, indeed it is a hard to classify one. Though the through line of parallel criticism of two social classes (more on this later) is ever present the film moves shiftingly through a sea of conventional genera types. It begins as 'white telephone' melodrama, escalates too high farce, and ends in a melancholy, almost resigned sense of tragedy. It is Shakespearean.

The film concerns as it where, two classes under one roof, a perfectly fitting metaphor for any society, be it expressed as  the British Upstairs, Downstairs, or its true life American counter-part Backstairs at the White House. Love (and lust) transcend class, with one as likely to be felled by it as the other. Here we see parallel 'love triangles', though sometimes containing as many as five players. We see class distinctions not so much in the game, but in the rules by which it is played.

Among the upper classes it is a game of form, odd unspoken rules, hypocrisy and a passive aggressiveness that is sometimes directed out word and sometimes in.  Andre Jurieux (Roland Toutian) is a daring aviator (at the beginning of the film he's just set the world speed record for a solo flight from New York to Pairs) and is in love with Christine de la Chesnaye (Nora Gregor), the Austrian born daughter of a late famous orchestra conductor. Chrisitne is married too Robert de la Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio, good in this straight role, though he usually played comic figures), a bored, independently wealthy French aristocrat whose spends his time indulging a passion for mechanical toys and music box's. Robert is also having an affair with Genevieve de Marras (Mila Parely, who ironically died just last week at the age of 94), though he wants to end it and recommit to his wife.

Among the 'lower classes' in this film is Lisette (Paulette Dubost), Christine's loyal maid, who is married too Gaston Modot (Edouard Schumacher), the groundskeeper at the de la Chesnaye's country estate. As Lisette always accompanies Chrisitne to the city which is her primary residence, the young maid's frequent absences from her husband allow her to conduct an ongoing affair with Octave, who is played by Renior himself. Octave is the only character in the film who transcends or bridges the classes, feeling comfortable in both worlds, a cultured man with little money. He studied under Chrisitnes late father in Vienna, and is a friend of the aviator Jurieux. Reluctantly Octave agrees to ensure that Jurieux is invited to a weekend of quail and rabbit hunting at the de la Chesnaye estate, so that he may try to persuade Christine to run away with him.

While at the estate Robert befriends Marceau (Julien Carette) a poor local who has been pouching rabbits on his land. Marceau has recently become the object of Modot's frustrations, a poacher he couldn't catch. When Modot does apprehend Marceau he finds that Robert doesn't care as he'd been trying to get rid of the rabbits anyway. Robert gives Marceau a job on the estates household staff where he becomes enamored of Lisette, who returns his affections, and the two attempt to start an affair. Modot, who already hates Marceau, picks up on this and becomes insanely jealous. As Modot has a gun, and is a member of the lower classes, he is more apt to become violent in love then his more reserved betters.

The film more or less climaxes in a prolonged, comic party sequences before ending a forlorn manner after Christine and Octave revel that it is really each other that they love, and Octave decides he must leave as the consequence of a mistaken shooting in which he was not really involved. Complicated and tragic, though sometimes funny, this mediation on 'the game' seeks to point out, among other things, the often selfish way in which we pro fess to love others, and the degree to which we will degrade our selves in loves pursuit. Insularly amusing themselves with the game of love as the world falls apart around them, Renoir's film is a fatalistic rumination on the French of all classes, that is really a comment on the complicated nature of all men & women.

Great