The Rules of the Game - 1939 - Film

Tuesday, January 2, 2007



This is my third or fourth time seeing Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game, and my first time seeing it on 35mm film. A famous Chicago film historian was in attendance, and I heard a rumor that he was underwhelmed by the print, noting that it was practically unchanged since its last release in 1961. That could be true, and he would certainly know better than I, though, the print was sparkly-clean and I saw it as a lovely opportunity to see what is perhaps the best film ever made on the format which it was intended to be seen. It was gorgeous.

Each time I see Rules it is new to me, which could be attributed to the fact that it is usually years between screenings (it was in fact at least two years since I had last seen it this time around), but I still keep the basic outline intact in my memory. As I watched this time I was awestruck once more by the choreography. Not dancing per se, but the synchronized movement among the characters and camera, and how they both manipulated the layout of the house they occupied. Servants and attendants scurry up and down stairs; doors slam and one person exits while another one enters from some point off screen. Oftentimes the camera is in a continual pan that meets the character as he crosses paths with another one; almost like a relay one character will pass the camera's attention on to the next, and so it continues for roughly the entire duration of the film.

Everything happens so fast, and people move fast in Renoir's film. Christine (Nora Gregor) manages to have three different men fall in love with her in the course of a night, all of whom give up on her (or get shot and killed) in the same length of time. That's what's so fantastic about Rules for me, the amount of action (and compelling action) that is compressed into a matter of minutes. It's a life cycle that runs the gamut of emotions, from love to hate, all the while keeping us conscious of class and social divide. Of course, watching the rabbit die in the famous hunting scene is enough to make you quake or even cry, and in fact I think I heard soft sniffles from the woman sitting next to me as that bunny stretched out his last ounce of life.