The Rules of the Game (1939) - #216

... and the game is called "Dancing on a Volcano."

That's how director Jean Renoir described the process of cinematically representing the society of which he was a part, a French populace that clearly sensed the imminent danger it faced and yet appeared too powerless, unprepared, and fatally distracted to do anything about. The Rules of the Game marks a pivotal moment in cinematic and cultural history and now, 70 years after its initial release, stands as one of the supreme touchstones and reference points in the entire domain of film as art and social commentary.

Indeed, I've felt the challenge of blogging about this film building even before it came up in my queue. This is a superior movie and one I've immensely enjoyed watching closely and carefully over the past several days. But for ease of commentary, give me some (relatively) obscure and underappreciated work any day. There's been no shortage of top quality writing and analysis of this film over the past four or five decades at least, after the fury of WWII had died down and the film was rediscovered by a younger generation than the one that had vilified, virtually censored, and almost destroyed it upon initial release. From it's ignominious debut to its eventual enthronement as a consensus Top Ten in international film polls (and a frequent first, second or third placeholder in the arthouse crowd), The Rules of the Game can attribute a fair amount of its lasting impact to the extraordinary story of the film itself, as a once-endangered artifact and a brutally honest mirror of a society in denial as it teetered on the very brink of convulsive, violent, self-inflicted trauma.

So let's take a moment to look at the context from which Rules of the Game emerged. Jean Renoir had spent the preceding decade establishing his reputation as a filmmaker of the first rank. With his critically-acclaimed Grand Illusion and smashing commercial success of La Bete Humaine, Renoir had outgrown his "son of the famous painter" reputation and had now established sufficient clout to open his own studio, Nouvelle Editions Francaise. The Rules of the Game was his first and only production for the new company (which was abruptly put out of business by WWII and Renoir's move to Hollywood), and it was clearly the most ambitious, eagerly anticipated French film of the year. However, its 1939 debut was nothing short of a calamity. Audiences howled and raged at the screen, and one viewer went so far as to try to set the theater on fire with a burning newspaper. Renoir was present to witness the fury and by the end of opening week had authorized severe cuts to the film (from 94 to 81 minutes, focusing the edits on scenes that provoked the most furious reactions.) Even these concessions were not enough to salvage the film's commercial prospects; it closed much more quickly than anyone had anticipated and was eventually censored by the Nazis after they conquered France the following year. The master negative was destroyed during the war and for the next 15 years, only a few flawed versions of the short cut of the film existed, which served to establish its base of support, particularly among younger French cineastes who would go on to lead the Nouvelle Vague of the late 1950s and '60s.

So The Rules of the Game is part of that venerable cultural canon of artworks that generated sincere apoplectic indignation upon first release. I have long been fascinated by these stories, the kind that I've heard associated with music (Stravinsky, Dylan, the Sex Pistols), painting (Picasso, Dada, the Surrealists) and film (Bunuel, Spike Lee and now Renoir.) What is it about these works that gets so deep under people's skins that they lose composure and react so viscerally, supposedly in the name of virtue, good taste and defense of "the sacred?"

Returning then to The Rules of the Game, there's a fair amount one could focus on. The plot is driven by incidents of marital indiscretion, with assorted love triangles popping up like mushrooms in a cow pasture after the rain. But Renoir and countless other continental directors had been dealing with that theme for years - just read through my previous blog posts here! There are acts of violence - murder, a suicide attempt, and the actual on-camera killings of real animals (birds, rabbits, even a cat!) That would stir reactions from contemporary animal rights activists if a popular director showed innocent creatures getting shot in order to simply "make a point." But no one was talking about animal rights in those days, not with the Third Reich arming itself to the teeth and populist fascism making inroads throughout European society - people were too concerned with protecting their own hides.

No, what really bothered the fashionable audience on the Champs-Elysses (where the film had its premiere) was that they themselves, and their peers, were squarely and unambiguously the object of the satire, or one could even say ridicule, that Renoir and his cast and crew created. Dissolution of marriage, the death of heroes, even a bleakly nihilistic resignation to fate and the miseries of life - no problem with any of that... but, impugn our sense of honor?!? Monsieur, you shall hear from my seconds forthwith! Pistols at dawn it shall be!

Renoir's insight and (presumably) earnest desire to awaken his fellow citizens to what he saw happening in and around them was clearly commendable, admirably visionary, and for all commercial purposes, terribly naive and misguided if his intention was to make another popular, divertingly pleasant film, as he himself said was his hope in the introduction that he filmed in 1967. We can only be glad that he got it so wrong, because if he had been more attuned to the reception his film was likely to generate, he probably would have played it a whole lot safer and we'd be deprived of a stupendous, amazing masterpiece. This is a film that rewards (and perhaps demands) several viewings to fully appreciate and begin to fathom. The construction of the scenes, the progression of action, the fullness of characters and the incredibly intricate cross-connections of relationships that continually shift and transform through scene after scene is more than one pass-thru can assimilate. And the nice thing is that watching it is not some grueling cerebral exercise. There's wonderful humor, biting wit, nuanced performance, innovative cinematography, refreshingly natural atmospherics and a host of influence-wielding scenes echoed in film conventions ever since to admire once one has become thoroughly familiar with the plot.

Having enthused to this degree, I guess it's only fitting that I take a few minutes to summarize the story itself for those who haven't seen it yet or want a refresher. My hope is that it only whets your appetite to get personally acquainted with The Rules of the Game, because it really must be seen by anyone seeking to be reasonably informed on the great movies of the 20th century. Even if it doesn't move you or live up to the lofty expectations reviews like this create - you still ought to know it for yourself.

So here goes: the film opens with a plane landing out of the darkness after its hero-celebrity pilot Andre Jurieux breaks a record for trans-Atlantic flight. He's greeted by a throng on the tarmac but bluntly expresses his disappointment on a live radio broadcast when his lover Christine fails to be among those in the crowd. Christine, of course, is married to someone other than himself, and the scene quickly moves to her boudoir, attended by her maid, listening to that same broadcast. Her husband, the Marquis de la Chesnaye, knows of Christine's dalliance and, inspired by her tact in refraining from meeting Jurieux so publicly, decides that he will break off his own affair with Genevieve, a Parisian sophisticate with whom he's become rather bored as of late anyway. Into this entanglement stumbles Octave, played by Renoir, a single, somewhat clownish character who's known Christine since her aristocratic childhood in Austria and has finagled his way into somewhat intimate friendships with most of the other key figures in this social set, even though he himself is poor and rather common. (The actress who played Christine was herself a genuine Austrian princess whose real-life husband created his own share of tensions on the set.)

As events proceed, the upper class complexities find their mirror image among the servants who adopt the attitudes and imitate the behaviors of their masters, broadening Renoir's critique away from the stereotypical "foibles of the rich" and toward something more generically and broadly "wrong" with French (and European) society as a whole. Give Renoir credit for being an equal opportunity offender!

After establishing the main characters in their ordinary Parisian setting, the action shifts to La Chesnaye's country estate where all the elements are assembled for a light-hearted, farcical comedy of manners. One could easily envision the scenes of characters romping through hallways, opening and closing doors in quick succession, mistaken identities and laughs a-plenty as the confusion mounts and narrative levers are pulled. And indeed, a lot of this happens, though with a sharp, critical, cynical edge that cuts a bit deeper than audiences of this time were prepared to endure. And the ending...! I won't say exactly what happens, but in keeping with the tradition of "poetic realism," (c.f. Pepe le Moko, Port of Shadows, La Bete Humaine) it's not exactly happy - or is it? What separates the conclusion of The Rules of the Game from the ends of these three popular predecessors is its tidy resolution and nearly flippant equanimity in the face of terrible injustice. A prominent character is killed, both intentionally and accidentally (ponder that one a bit), and other than a few tears shed by an emotionally overwrought maid at the end of a long night, no one seems all that particularly disturbed. It turns out that it was a death that was in the best interests of the survivors... a death made necessary, according to... The Rules of the Game.

This trailer does a better job of presenting the film than any particular scene I could have pulled off of YouTube. I don't think there's a single scene that could be extracted to give sufficient impression of its construction as a whole, so here's just a taste.

And here's my obligatory shout-out to Gaston Modot!

This post also brings the 1930s to a conclusion as far as this series is concerned. It's my 40th review so far in 2009 and I am very eager to move into a new decade and era of film-making history! Thanks to everyone who's been dropping in here - I hope you enjoy the series and I'd love to read your comments, or emails if you prefer.

Next: Rebecca