The Rules of the Game (1939)

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The Rules of the Game (1939) – J. Renoir

Often cited as the best movie of all time, Renoir’s 1939 masterpiece manages to operate on multiple levels simultaneously, thereby increasing its pleasures.  On the simplest, most straightforward level, it is a tale of love and the game-playing that lovers may do (when they don’t know their own hearts or those of their lovers), to keep up appearances and to tease and confound their pursuers and the pursued – although the frankest, most sincere lovers may come up short in such spirited affairs. On the next deepest level, the film pokes at class differences, suggesting that any upstairs-downstairs distinctions (the film is set mainly at a country estate on the weekend of a grand fete) are merely an illusion, with both classes following the same rules (la regle du jeu, of course). The masters and the servants are essentially doubled, with two trios each featuring a married couple and an interloper, playing themes and variations on the plot’s strings.  Finally, at the deepest level, the film reveals Renoir’s angst at Europe’s failure to contend with Hitler’s rise, choosing to ignore or to placate him, keeping up appearances, just as the bourgeois guests at the estate prefer to ignore or overlook the harsh realities before them, not only of the hunt (a truly graphic interlude) but of the shocking behavior, including murder, that goes on but is explained away, following the rules of decorum, by the protagonists.  Truly, everyone may have their reasons – but this may only help to understand not to excuse actions. Evoking a mood of anxiety, uncertainty, and foreboding, and blending it with his interest in theatricality, Renoir has captured lightning in a bottle. This is a film of such rich carefully planned complexity, wedded somehow to seemingly spontaneous chaos, that it bears repeated viewings (this is my umpteenth time) and indeed close scrutiny and undoubtedly contains lessons for our time.