LA RÈGLE DU JEU (The Rules of the Game) directed by Jean Renoir (France, 1939)
Jean Renoir made over forty movies from the silent era to the talkies but I’m slightly ashamed to say that this is the first movie of his I’ve seen.
I was prompted to start plugging this huge gap in my movie knowledge by the fact that La Règle du Jeu was voted number 4 in the latest BFI/Sight & Sound list of the greatest films of all time.
It’s always hard to evaluate movies that are so much of their age. For instance, it’s difficult to imagine why this combination of high farce and drama should have so offended the French audience when it was first shown.
The Parisians apparently derided it and the government banned it for being “demoralising” so it was only after the second world war that it started to be evaluated by a more open-minded public. It wasn’t until 1959 that it was restored and edited to the definitive version. Continue reading
