ElMaruecan82 After landing on the Bourget airfield, André Jurieu (Roland Toutain) is celebrated like the French Lindberg by a cheerful crowd, a radio reporter, political representatives and his best friend Octave (Jean Renoir) but his joy instantly fades into bitterness when he realizes his beloved Christine is missing. André publicly shares his sorrow, calling her a liar, a move Octave will deem as puerile. The genius opening of Renoir's "Rules of the Game", made at the dawn of World War 2, less establishes the titular rules than one who's not part of it. André is the ultimate romantic, risking his life for a woman and embodying this magnificent saying from romantic writer Lamartine's: "One person is missing and the whole word seems depopulated". There's no place for romanticism in Renoir's masterpiece that borrows more from "The Marriage of Figaro", written by Marivaux. Marivaux gave his name to the French term: marivaudage, meaning 'little games of love', like a lighthearted way to call gallantries. The film even sets the tone by opening with Marivaux' lines: "If Cupid was given wings, was it not to flitter?" And boy, will Cupid flitter. I defy anyone to find a movie with as many layers of love and potential romances, you wouldn't even guess who'd end up with whom. To make it simple, there is only André and another schmuck of 'exclusive' heart: the gamekeeper Schumacher (Gaston Modot, of Bunuel's "Age d'Or") is married to Lisette (Paulette Dubost) the chambermaid of Christine. It's interesting that the scene following the opening features these poor guys' women.Christine (Nora Gregor) is an Austrian married to a rich aristocrat named Robert de la Chastenaye and played by Marcel Dalio (he was Rosenthal, the rich Jew of "Grand Illusion"). She and Lisette talk about their marriage and lovers, without guilt, Lisette has fully embraced her milieu's manners and believes she gives men what they want. Later, Marceau (Julien Carrette), a poacher despised by Schumacher but hired as a servant by Robert, flirts with her, and this little subplot converge with the first triangular love into the unexpectedly tragic ending.And the central piece of this vaudeville is the marquis Robert, a compromising and mild- mannered man whose personality gets more enigmatic as the plot moves. His answer to the aviator's affair is to invite his mistress Genevieve (Mila Parely) in the castle with the other guests. Octave approves the decision because he needs Christine to get in André's arms. Robert's sense of etiquette and class are often praised (generally as a contrast to his ethnic background) but he's also capable of making surprising moves, like hiring Shumacher's rival, and inviting his mistress and his rival, to give everyone's a chance.And when all the pieces of the game have been placed, "The Rules of the Games" blossoms as one of the most bizarrely entertaining social commentaries about a class totally disconnected from the world. If not a study, this is a real slap in the face of the social conventions that prevailed in the bourgeois class. Everything has been said about the infamous hunting game where beaters walk across the forest to make the poor rabbits and pheasants hide in the meadow and become the perfect target to the hunters. An exercise in cruelty sublimated by the contrasts between the purity of animals and the mechanical gestures. The same goes for love: it's purity vs. mechanics. It's fitting that Robert is a collector of mechanical musical toys. Many scenes feature men fooling around with Lisette (Octave, Marceau) as soon as the music from the radio starts the girl plays 'hard to get' and the guy chases her… and that's all, it's boring as soon as it becomes sincere. And this all comes down to an extraordinary climax where all these mechanics are played together and the players seem to play hide-and-seek with the camera and the jealous husbands or lovers, while the very director, wearing a bear suit is disoriented as if he was overwhelmed by the genius disorder he created. And the dance macabre goes on playing as the dark omen of the tragic finale to come: the death of Andre, ironically shot by his counterpart Schumacher.The tragic irony of André is that when he had the one opportunity to flee with Christine, to be fully romantic but he stayed because of good manners. Schumacher mistaking him for Octave and Christine for Lisette, shoots Andre like the rabbits the day earlier, the purity of love has been terminated. And the mechanisms of the bourgeois life cover the crime: Robert forgives his gamekeeper and invites his guest to come to the castle, one man has been sacrificed on the altar of this nonsense, but the honor is safe. And this is where Renoir hits the sensitive chord, after having sublimated the end of era from military gentlemen's perspective in "Grand Illusion", this is the decadent and self-conscious bourgeoisie that contributed to the collapse of the world.The film was ill-received at the time of its release but it's hard to root for the same society that'd make so much 'bad moves' during the War, it's only after France had come to terms with its own past, and when the final cut, reassembled in 1959 was projected, that they saw Renoir was ahead of his time, and his film became an instant milestone on filmmaking like Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane". The two movies, if anything, have transcended the use of filmmaking for the storytelling. Through his deep focus shots, his revolutionary uses of movements in the backgrounds, so many things happen in this film you're likely to miss them at first, second or third viewing and at the end. The reason is that there's no main protagonist, and each viewing makes you realize they all had their reasons, and as Octave says, that's the awful thing about life.And that's the great thing about "The Rules Of the Game".

Manuel Josh Rivera The movie takes the superficial form of a country house farce, at which wives and husbands, lovers and adulterers, masters and servants, sneak down hallways, pop up in each other's bedrooms and pretend that they are all proper representatives of a well-ordered society.All of this comes to a climax in the famous sequence of the house party, which includes an amateur stage performance put on for the entertainment of guests and neighbors. This sequence can be viewed time and again, to appreciate how gracefully Renoir moves from audience to stage to backstage to rooms and corridors elsewhere in the house, effortlessly advancing half a dozen courses of action, so that at one point during a moment of foreground drama a door in the background opens and we see the latest development in another relationship. It is interesting how little actual sexual passion is expressed in the movie. Schumacher the gamekeeper is eager to exercise his marital duties, but Lisette cannot stand his touch and prefers for him to stay in the country while she stays in town as Christine's maid. The aviator's love for Christine is entirely in his mind. The poacher Marceau would rather chase Lisette than catch her. Robert and his mistress Genevieve savor the act of illicit meetings more than anything they might actually do at them.It is indeed all a game, in which you may have a lover if you respect your spouse and do not make the mistake of taking romance seriously. The destinies of the gamekeeper and the aviator come together because they both labor under the illusion that they are sincere.The finished shot, ending with Robert's face, is a study in complexity, and Renoir says it may be the best shot he ever filmed. It captures the buried theme of the film: That on the brink of war they know what gives them joy but play at denying it, while the world around them is closing down joy, play and denial.

dlee2012 When one looks at this film, one immediately appreciates how much cinematographic technique had improved since the birth of the talkies some ten-twelve years previously. Renoir showcases a dazzling array of techniques that transforms this potentially "stagey" comedy of manners, with its limited number of characters and locations, into true cinema. Deep focus shots and panning reveals are all used to good effect here, giving the film an extraordinary dynamism.Social expectations are constantly subverted - the pilot who has completed the Atlantic crossing is not the macho hero one expects but a forlorn, jilted lover. Indeed, at the end he does not die an heroic death or win the girl but is killed due to a farcical case of mistaken identity. Likewise, the Jewish character is no outsider, but accepted as being at the heart of society.This subversion leads to the heart of the story which exposes the upper classes/nobility as a deeply corrupt and decadent group of individuals, and not the exemplary citizens that the lower classes need as role models. In fact, the opposite is true. The bad example being set by the upper classes is leading workers such as the gamekeeper and poacher astray as they seek to imitate their behaviour. Hence the poison is spreading through society from the top down.There is some effective use of motifs throughout. The scene of wanton slaughter during the hunt shows both the wastefulness and emptiness of the lives of the upper class, who amuse themselves only through love affairs and destructive behaviour. The scene also foreshadows the death of the aviator.Likewise, the notion of the cupid having wings meaning he is meant to fly also points to the aviator as being central to this story.Also, the scenes of theatre and plays-within-plays are, of course, a technique that have been used to great effect ever since Hamlet. Here, they once more reinforce the notion that the nobility are constantly wearing masks and playing at roles. They are so disassociated from "real life" that they cannot take anything seriously or possibly comprehended the seriousness of the consequences of their actions, even when confronted with them. Those observations are left to us, the audience, who sits outside the action.The ending is ambiguous: are the upper classes, with their euphemism and deceit really a dying race or is this one more lie? Perhaps the looming war seemed to foreshadow the destruction of their world but, if anything, western society is now as deceitful and corrupt as ever, if not with respect to the virtually-extinct old European nobility, then certainly in terms of the professional classes of politicians, academics and lawyers.Ultimately, this is Renoir at his most mature but it is not an easily-accessible film and one should be prepared to undertake repeated viewings. As with all of the director's work, pacing and rhythm are problematic and there are long lulls between bursts of drama.

jc-osms There's always fascination in getting a look behind the doors of a stately house, to see how the other half live as it were and on the evidence of Renoir's celebrated "eve of war" movie, it's a place better to visit than inhabit.There's always the feeling however, that like dancing on the edge of a cliff tragedy will eventually overtake these merry pranksters and so it proves. However, even when it does, everyone seems to accept it as almost an occupational hazard,shrug their shoulders and move on.That shouldn't be surprising given what's gone before though as the myriad characters above and below stairs interact in a social and sexual comedy of manners. Renoir sets women at the centre of the maelstrom, firstly Lady Christine, a bored intellectual society wife, torn between three lovers, including her husband, whose own mistress struggles to come to terms with his leaving her after a long-standing affair, while Christine's maid, the coquettish Lizette plays fast and loose with her big lunk of a husband by flirting outrageously with the domestic staff's new recruit, the poacher and unwittingly sets in motion the tragedy that follows.I enjoyed the drama despite some longeurs, only natural in such an old film, but I was certainly intrigued enough by the characters and their very fluid situations to keep watching throughout. All of the actors seem excellent to me, particularly Nora Gregor, who has a vaguely Garbo-like demeanour and Paulette Dubost as Lisette, who recalls her namesake Paulette Goddard with her sprightliness and general joie-de-vivre. Of the male actors, I most felt the presence of Jean Renoir as the lovable but hapless Octave, the unwitting accomplice to the murder of playboy Jurieux.Yes, it's dated to some extent and some of the allegory is a touch strained at times, but I found this a fascinating social document on the lifestyles of the rich and famous c.1939 and to be truthful, one never knows when it will prove to be topical again.