The rules of the game
Janus filmsApparently a million stories unfold The rules of the game, but that’s not what makes it special. The genius of the film, which swings into the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Saturday and Sunday in a sparkling new 4K restoration, lies in the way filmmaker Jean Renoir creates the illusion that we’re watching, to borrow the title of a current favorite , Everything Everywhere at a time.
Other films had used a moving camera and composition in depth before Rules premiered, to much controversy, in 1939. But nothing had taken these techniques this far. Orson Welles was a big fan and you can easily see the influence Renoir’s film had Citizen Kane, which came just two years later. Both place as much emphasis on background as foreground; there is something happening on all visual levels, and it is all dramaturgically important.
Most of the action takes place in a French country château, where the idle rich are having a bit of fun – if you consider marital discord, class strife, the killing of small animals, casual anti-Semitism and lifestyles built on lies to be fun. The master of the house is the Marquis de la Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio), an inefficient man who juggles his Viennese wife, Christine (Nora Gregor), and the Parisian mistress Geneviève (Mila Parély). Christine has another, more eager suitor, the aviator hero André (Roland Toutain), the film’s tragic romantic; his best friend, Octave (played by Renoir himself), is at times jovial and melancholy. He also happens to be in love with Christine.
The rules of the game
Janus filmsThey are all essentially ignorant, engrossed in their own interpersonal squabbles and petty insecurities while Europe has already begun to burn. French audiences and critics, who perhaps saw a little too much of themselves in the film’s characters, were not kind. The most expensive French film ever made at the time, it was a flop in every way. Renoir cut it drastically – only decades later it would be restored – but it was still banned by the French government for “having an undesirable influence on the young.” Today it may seem funny that this sophisticated tragicomedy of manners was too hot to handle on release. But The rules of the game is no joke. It’s a sharp deconstruction of the aristocracy that manages to be both light as a feather and venomous as a rattlesnake.
The film has two bravura set pieces. The first is a hunt organized by the Marquis, who gathers his guests on his sprawling estate to shoot down helpless pheasants and rabbits, caught in their death struggle while the hunters argue and congratulate each other on the goal. The other is an elaborate masquerade that descends into shootouts, trickery and general mayhem as furious gamekeeper Schumacher (Gaston Modot), setting out on his own hunt, pursues the newly hired poacher-tuned servant Marceau (a slyly comic Julien Carette). ) who has his aim at Schumacher’s wife, Christine’s maid Lisette (Paulette Dubost).
The rules of the game
Janus filmsThe camerawork here is terrifically nimble, as we swing from one crisis to another with little editing. This passage, more than any other, earned The rules of the game a place in the pantheon of poetic realism, as Renoir combines documentary truth with an artistic expressiveness that only cinema could achieve.
The film flows so freely, with a sense of effortlessness, that it often feels like one long scene that expands and contracts over time. But there was nothing easy about the production. The primary setting, the castle, was constructed as a series of sets of hinges and wheels, designed to highlight the sliding camera work. Mirrors also play a role, revealing off-camera action that comments on the exchanges that naturally draw the eye. The rules of the game consumes the entire screen, demanding—or perhaps politely asking—that we become active viewers, willing to scan, soak up, and interpret everything that happens.
And yet the task comes smoothly and naturally, just like the film itself. The rules of the game is among the most generous and inviting of the big films (it ranked No. 13 on the recent, much-discussed Sight and sound critic survey). It goes down, to quote The sweet smell of success, like “a cake full of arsenic,” sweet, but poisonous to the sensibilities of the public who despised it. But the aftertaste has been exquisite, and fortunately more widely acquired in the many decades since.
The rules of the game showing Saturday March 11 and Sunday March 12 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. For tickets and more information, visit the museum’s website.
