The country house drama, exemplified by films like "Gosford Park" and "Downton Abbey" would seem to be a quintessentially British genre, but "La Règle du Jeu" is an example from France. Most of the action takes place at La Colinière, the country estate of Robert, Marquis de la Chesnaye. Like "Gosford Park" and "Downton Abbey" (and the British television series "Upstairs, Downstairs") it deals not only with the wealthy classes but also with their servants.
The film opens with a quotation from Beaumarchais' "Le Mariage de Figaro", the play which inspired Mozart's opera. The play's theme, romantic affairs among masters and servants, is also the theme of the film. Among the upper classes there is a complicated love-pentagon involving Robert, his beautiful Austrian-born wife Christine, his mistress Genevieve, André Jurieux, a famous aviator who has been invited to La Colinière, and André's friend Octave (who is played by the director Jean Renoir). Both André and Octave are in love with Christine. Among the servants there is a love-triangle involving Robert's gamekeeper Schumacher, his wife Lisette, who is also Christine's maid, and Marceau, a disreputable local poacher who has been taken on by Robert as a servant.
"La Règle du Jeu" starts off as a comedy of manners; Renoir admitted that his inspiration came from the 18th century comic playwrights Beaumarchais and Marivaux. As in "Le Mariage de Figaro", the ending depends upon mistaken identity. Unlike that play, however, the film ends tragically rather than comically; Schumacher shoots and kills André, whom he has mistaken for Octave, whom he wrongly suspects of trying to elope with Lisette. Schumacher is not punished for his crime, because Robert reports it to the police as an unfortunate accident. The implication of the title is that Schumacher, and some of the other characters, have not properly understood or followed the "rules" of the "game" of love and flirtation they are playing.
The film was made in the winter and spring of 1939, during the last few months before the outbreak of the Second World War, and opened in July, during the last few weeks of peace. It was not a success when first released, either with the critics or at the box-office; perhaps the French public found it too frivolous in tone at a time of international crisis. When war came the French government, supposedly fighting to preserve democracy and free speech, banned it for being "depressing, morbid, immoral and having an undesirable influence over the young". The film was also banned during the German occupation; the Nazis distrusted Renoir because of his leftist political sympathies and objected to the fact that the partly-Jewish Robert is married to an Aryan.
The fact that the film was made shortly before the outbreak of war and the debacle of 1940 has led some to see it as a satirical portrait of a corrupt society on the eve of destruction. Certainly Renoir did intend an element of social criticism. Although none of the characters, not even the killer Schumacher, is depicted as entirely unsympathetic, Renoir is more critical of the society to which they belong, portrayed as unequal and unjust. Schumacher's inability to understand the "rules" may be due to the fact that he is an outsider in this society. His name suggests German ancestry, and we learn that he is a native of Alsace, which in 1939 would have meant that he was probably born a German citizen.
In my view, however, linking the film too strongly to the events of 1939/30, although one possible interpretation, risks diminishing its more universal significance. The year 1939 was not merely the year when war broke out. It also was the year which marked the 150th anniversary of the French Revolution, yet after a century and a half of lip-service to "liberty, equality and fraternity", France was as much a land of masters and servants as any other. There is nothing in the film that could not have happened in Britain, and, apart from André's flight across the Atlantic, little that could not have happened in the pre-Revolutionary France of the 18th century. If fact, there is little that could not happen in 2021, in any country of the world, system of government quite incidental. The social inequality which Renoir criticises is not something unique to the France of the late thirties, not is it necessarily indicative of a society on the verge of collapse.
Moreover, the concept of "rules" in the film is wider than the comparison of love to a game with its own rules. There are also the unwritten rules (not necessarily to be equated with formal laws) which underpin all societies, hierarchical or egalitarian, conservative or revolutionary, and which we disregard at our peril.
Despite its initial failure, the reputation of "La Règle du Jeu" has steadily risen since it was made, and has influenced many subsequent directors, both in France and elsewhere, including Robert Altman, the director of "Gosford Park". Many today would regard it as a masterpiece, an assessment with which I would not disagree. It is a complex, many-layered piece of social analysis which richly repays watching. 9/10
The film opens with a quotation from Beaumarchais' "Le Mariage de Figaro", the play which inspired Mozart's opera. The play's theme, romantic affairs among masters and servants, is also the theme of the film. Among the upper classes there is a complicated love-pentagon involving Robert, his beautiful Austrian-born wife Christine, his mistress Genevieve, André Jurieux, a famous aviator who has been invited to La Colinière, and André's friend Octave (who is played by the director Jean Renoir). Both André and Octave are in love with Christine. Among the servants there is a love-triangle involving Robert's gamekeeper Schumacher, his wife Lisette, who is also Christine's maid, and Marceau, a disreputable local poacher who has been taken on by Robert as a servant.
"La Règle du Jeu" starts off as a comedy of manners; Renoir admitted that his inspiration came from the 18th century comic playwrights Beaumarchais and Marivaux. As in "Le Mariage de Figaro", the ending depends upon mistaken identity. Unlike that play, however, the film ends tragically rather than comically; Schumacher shoots and kills André, whom he has mistaken for Octave, whom he wrongly suspects of trying to elope with Lisette. Schumacher is not punished for his crime, because Robert reports it to the police as an unfortunate accident. The implication of the title is that Schumacher, and some of the other characters, have not properly understood or followed the "rules" of the "game" of love and flirtation they are playing.
The film was made in the winter and spring of 1939, during the last few months before the outbreak of the Second World War, and opened in July, during the last few weeks of peace. It was not a success when first released, either with the critics or at the box-office; perhaps the French public found it too frivolous in tone at a time of international crisis. When war came the French government, supposedly fighting to preserve democracy and free speech, banned it for being "depressing, morbid, immoral and having an undesirable influence over the young". The film was also banned during the German occupation; the Nazis distrusted Renoir because of his leftist political sympathies and objected to the fact that the partly-Jewish Robert is married to an Aryan.
The fact that the film was made shortly before the outbreak of war and the debacle of 1940 has led some to see it as a satirical portrait of a corrupt society on the eve of destruction. Certainly Renoir did intend an element of social criticism. Although none of the characters, not even the killer Schumacher, is depicted as entirely unsympathetic, Renoir is more critical of the society to which they belong, portrayed as unequal and unjust. Schumacher's inability to understand the "rules" may be due to the fact that he is an outsider in this society. His name suggests German ancestry, and we learn that he is a native of Alsace, which in 1939 would have meant that he was probably born a German citizen.
In my view, however, linking the film too strongly to the events of 1939/30, although one possible interpretation, risks diminishing its more universal significance. The year 1939 was not merely the year when war broke out. It also was the year which marked the 150th anniversary of the French Revolution, yet after a century and a half of lip-service to "liberty, equality and fraternity", France was as much a land of masters and servants as any other. There is nothing in the film that could not have happened in Britain, and, apart from André's flight across the Atlantic, little that could not have happened in the pre-Revolutionary France of the 18th century. If fact, there is little that could not happen in 2021, in any country of the world, system of government quite incidental. The social inequality which Renoir criticises is not something unique to the France of the late thirties, not is it necessarily indicative of a society on the verge of collapse.
Moreover, the concept of "rules" in the film is wider than the comparison of love to a game with its own rules. There are also the unwritten rules (not necessarily to be equated with formal laws) which underpin all societies, hierarchical or egalitarian, conservative or revolutionary, and which we disregard at our peril.
Despite its initial failure, the reputation of "La Règle du Jeu" has steadily risen since it was made, and has influenced many subsequent directors, both in France and elsewhere, including Robert Altman, the director of "Gosford Park". Many today would regard it as a masterpiece, an assessment with which I would not disagree. It is a complex, many-layered piece of social analysis which richly repays watching. 9/10