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"The Rules of the Game" is one of those movies that would be easy to be disappointed by, because it's constantly lauded as one of the greatest movies ever made, and anyone who's spent any time studying film knows that at some point you have to see this movie if you're going to consider yourself a film connoisseur. Well, it is excellent, though it's not excellent in a lot of obvious ways, and I could forgive someone for watching it and having a lukewarm reaction on a first viewing.

The film is sort of reminiscent of Bergman's "Smiles of a Summer Night" (though of course Renoir's movie came first) in its use of a country estate filled with a bunch of well-to-do's and the servants waiting on them. It also put me in the mind of Evelyn Waugh's novels, as Renoir uses a thin glaze of humour to mask some bitter truths about class and social standing. There are some downright slapstick moments that feel like something out of a silent comedy, but there are also some sober moments that give the film a very serious grounding.

What impressed me most was the fluidity of Renoir's direction. The camera is a constant observer, gliding through the vast house, following one character only to switch direction and follow another as he or she walks past. The viewer feels like a voyeur, and Renoir gives the impression that these characters would be behaving somewhat differently if they knew you were watching. I can't explain exactly how he does that, but the feeling comes across distinctly.

Probably needs to be watched a few times for a full appreciation. In fact, I need to watch it again myself.

Grade: A

Jean Renoir said that this was not intended to be a social commentary, and whether he truly intended it to be (he referred to it as, "An exact description of the bourgeoisie of our time.") or not, it is hard to dismiss that it hit close to home. So offended were the masses that the picture was banned. It is said that behind every joke there is truth, and whether this was intended to be a joke or not, Renoir still found truth. One could argue the director's intentions all day, but one matter that cannot be disputed is that this film is extraordinary! As a handful of French men and women converge on a château for a hunting expedition, their love affairs clash with their obligations to society's game. For instance, one cannot leave one's lover to be with another until he has confessed his adultery to her. Attempts to leave with another man's wife are particularly difficult, as well, unless the other man has a mistress of his own. These are but a few rules of the game. The old are for the old, the young are for the young. Members of one social order are forbidden to see members from another, and so on. Combine these rules with a tangled web of countless love affairs between a handful of people, and you can see the madness that erupts during the course of this movie. The parts are all played well, but it is the writing and directing of Renoir that makes the film the masterpiece that it is. Keeping all of these sordid affairs in order is an achievement in its own right, but Renoir moves his pieces all over the board like a skilled chess player, achieving his goal while never forgetting the rules of the game!

A weekend party assembles at the château of the Marquis de la Chesnaye. Among the guests André, an aviator, is in love with the Marquis's wife, Christine; the Marquis himself is conducting an affair with Geneviève; Octave, an old family friend, is also secretly in love with the Marquise. Meanwhile a poacher, appointed servant by the mischievous Marquis, comes to blows with the gamekeeper over the latter's flirtatious wife.

The set-up may remind one of The Shooting Party or Gosford Park, but the debt is naturally in the present film's favour. Rather, the upstairs-downstairs intrigue, the mingling of comedy with drama, and the setting prior to cataclysmic social/political change owe much to Beaumarchais's Le mariage de Figaro. Which explains the hostility of audiences and government alike on the film's release; it was cut, then banned outright, and not reconstituted until well into the 1950s.

To tap the source of the disquiet aroused by this superficially fluffy piece of bedroom farce ('Surely just the French doing what they do best?'), one must look beyond the typical observation that it was 'socially insidious because it was a clear attack on the haute-bourgeoisie, the very class who would shortly lead the troops against the Germans'. The auto-critique goes deeper than that.

Consider. The lower orders are no better than their irresponsible masters: the women are no less immoral, the men just as concerned to preserve their foreheads from cuckoldry. This is the culmination of Figaro's contract with the Count: he enjoins the latter to behave like an honest man, as befits his station; two centuries later, not only has the nobility welshed on the deal, it has brought the servant classes down with it. Renoir serves up for the French a portrait of a society which is rotten from top to bottom. 'The Rules of the Game' are: keep up appearances, and somehow the whole charade will be preserved indefinitely (barring Adolf and his Panzers, that is).

André, the aviator, the crosser of the Atlantic (distance, perspective), is the one who threatens the edifice. Being Christine's lover is not enough; she must elope with him, it must be 'honest'. If she does this she will be showing that feelings matter more than money and position. The choice is too much for her and she runs for cover with Octave, and thus sets in motion the mechanism by which everything ends in tragedy but the status quo is maintained, for now.

The working out of this theme in Renoir's hands leads to some striking juxtapositions of tone. Renoir the 'humanist', like Octave whom he plays, was a lover, and forgiver, of humanity. It was not in him to condemn without affection. In one scene the gamekeeper chases his rival through the drawing room discharging a pistol, while the guests barely look up from their cards: he is merely playing by the rules, after all. It was perhaps the coexistence of farcical sequences like this with the wanton slaughter of wildlife in the hunt scene that audiences found hard to take. Renoir himself wrote: 'During the shooting of the film I was torn between my desire to make a comedy of it and the wish to tell a tragic story. The result of this ambivalence was the film as it is.' Amen.

There's a food chain where the top is filled with crass, it's the opposite of cream, more septic mass, quite immoral and corrupt, degenerate and so abrupt, they have their rules, behave like mules, with necks of brass. You'd like to think these folk, had long since gone, but they're more common in today, so you'd be wrong, like leaches sucking blood, symbolically, they're all deadwood, but their claws are buried deep, so they hang on.

The decadent lives of those who have found themselves fat with inherited wealth and power, and the disdain they and their hangers on have for the rest of society in a world that still exists today.

I don't have much to add in terms of the film's quality. It is a legendary film built on some sharp social commentary and some innovative deep focus cinematography. It is perfectly enjoyable as a comedy of manners; the sequence when the affairs get exposed and the film becomes a farce is still laugh out loud funny to me. And of course the film has a ton of barbs about how the European aristocracy was not only terrible but allowed WWII to happen. But I do want to talk about one aspect that I really connect with.

Renoir plays Octave. The performance is a good performance, and the character is a engaging persona. However, Octave in a sense is the most contemptible character in the film. His cowardliness directly lead the tragic end. Renoir by casting *himself* in that part really tempers the bitterness of the film. It helps the film sympathizes with its characters while detesting the rules and structures that deform basic humanity. This decision anchors the film in a tender humanitarian.

It makes the film say we need to be better as opposed to the aristocracy is terrible.

The French hero aviator André Jurieux (Roland Toutain) is a national hero, after crossing the ocean in an airplane. He commits an indiscreet comment to the press about the absence of the bourgeois Christine de la Cheyniest (Nora Grégor) at his reception. His great friend Octave (Jean Renoir) arranges an invitation for André to spend a couple of days in the chateau of Christine and her husband Robert de la Cheyniest (Marcel Dalio), where they would be receiving some close friends for hunting rabbits and pheasant cocks. Along these days, we see a great fight of classes between the hypocrites bourgeois and the servant classes. This dramatic comedy is considered one of the best movies of the history of the cinema. It was forbidden by the French government first and then by the Germans, being the original copies totally destroyed along the war. However, in 1956 a copy was found and restored with the approval of Jean Renoir himself. In Brazil, the magnificent DVD released by the Brazilian distributor Versátil is wonderful, having a great quality of image and sound. The shadows in the black and white photography are outstanding and the story with many characters, shows a society full of liars, unfaithful husbands and wives, low character persons independently of their social classes, in a country near to the war and invasion by foreigner forces. In 2001, Robert Altman used the same idea and many components of 'La Règle du Jeu' in his awarded 'Gosford Park'. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): 'A Regra do Jogo' ('The Rules of the Game')

'The Rules of the Game' is one of the most important films in the history of the cinema, and it is considered the be one of the greatest achievements in film. Yet, this is one of those masterpieces that flies over my head. I'm not trying to say it was a bad movie, a total waste of time, and completely overrated piece of cinema. No, contrariwise, I found the film to be very entertaining. I enjoyed how the pace kept growing faster and faster, and the love triangles took very unexpected geometrical shapes. The comedy was wonderfully balanced between quite raunchy (considering the time the movie was released) and subtle innuendos. I can understand why this film didn't get that warm reception upon its release. I liked the cast, and chemistry between them. Characters were multidimensional, a feature that lacks in most modern dramas (not to mention comedies, that seems to be dead genre today). And what about the visual style - how the camera was almost like the part of the cast, it seamlessly moved along with the action. I liked the movie, but unlike most of the cinema aficionados, I didn't find 'The Rules of the Game' that exciting. Fun, and memorable, and something that I probably will watch again when I have the chance, but today, I have to admit - I didn't get the hype. It didn't touch me the way to be more than fantastically acted, cleverly written situation comedy.

I'll rate it seven stars at the moment, but I'm sure that I will give another try some times.

I have seen "The Rules of the Game" only once. But I loved it so much and it feels like a secret I want to share with the world. I certainly hope this does justice.

One of the greatest films of all time is one that some may not know because it is French. If you are not french, then basically only people outside of that country that know this are major cinefiles. That is really too bad because this IS as great as people say and it deserves to be studied. On the other hand, its partial obscurity makes this more personal and intimate to me. Whatever.

La Regle Du Jeu (that is its original title, but I will call it by its English name during the rest of this review) is one of the most beautiful and elegant flicks ever, like an Astaire & Rogers flick, "Trouble In Paradise," or a Fellini masterwork.

This Jean Renoir flick came out in what people often regard as cinema's finest year: 1939. That year there was "Wizard of Oz," "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington," "Goodbye Mr. Chips," and the major winner that year which was "Gone With The Wind." But this French film easily beats most of those flicks. It has even gone so far as critics and directors on BFI's Sight and Sound rating it near the very top of their lists. Out of the thousands of films I have seen, this is in the top 100 and my love for it may grow.

The film begins with a triumphant return of Andre. He is a pilot who beat Lindbergh's record and is welcomed by all, except the woman he loves. The whole point of his flight was for her, so the fact that she wasn't there to welcome him has him disappointed in the entire endeavour. His best friend, Octave (played gloriously by the director), tries to snap him out of it. The woman he loves is Christine, who is married to Robert who recently broke up with his mistress. In a bid to cheer up a down Andre, Octave gets Robert to invite them to to a manor in the country. More guests are invited where things grow and boil into explosive results. So much shock and insanity is in store with these people under one roof, too much to include in one review.

The character map of who's who grows and can be a bit confusing among first view. It is pretty complex, but it does make sense and can be fully digested among first viewing (I am saying it is possible to get confused, not likely). The complexity of it all is what I love about it. All are acted and developed perfectly. The relationships in the characters is fun like a Robert Altman epic, and the depth in each character is endlessly fascinating.

The lavish luxury is something to behold. I am not sure what aristocrats and bourgeois are in terms of social ranking, but whatever they are makes this great. In 1939, the Great Depression was ending and World War II was just starting. Unlike the screwball romcom "Trouble In Paradise" from 1932 which was the perfect escapist entertainment flick, "The Rules of the Game" looks more at the divisions of class and more important issues of life while still including the physical beauty and some comedy to soothe the viewer.

"The Rules of the Game" is a definite contender for the best movie ever made. It's best rivals would be "Citizen Kane," "Tokyo Story," what else!? So in short: buy this, study this, cherish this.

4/4

A group of people meet at a chateau for a hunting weekend. Among them is a celebrity, Andre Jurieux, a man who has just flown solo across the Atlantic Ocean. As the weekend progresses, animosities and rivalries come to light.

Written and directed by Jean Renoir, this movie is lauded as a classic and one of the greatest movies ever made. However, I really don't see what the fuss is about.

The story is hardly interesting or profound. There were some interesting and/or amusing scenes but the film often felt like a soap opera, with overblown, relationship-based machinations and melodrama. None of the characters were worth following and engagement was very limited.

The film was supposed to be a biting commentary on French social mores but I didn't see that. The actions of the guests hardly seemed laughable, even by today's standards, and there was no us vs them atmosphere between the guests and the staff.

Maybe the film just hasn't aged well. Whatever the reason, it is only moderately interesting and hardly profound.

At the risk of seeming heretical, I have to confess that having finally seen this film (at the American Museum of the Moving Image in NY), I found it disappointing to some degree.

I can appreciate the provocative candor with which Renoir has created this satire/indictment of a society which has lost its moorings. I think I'm capable of seeing what he was trying to do, and respect the goals he seems to be aiming for. I can also appreciate much of the acting (Nora Gregor seems especially luminous), the dramatic/narrative organization, the witty structural recurrences of things like the old man's "they're a dying race" lines and indeed the overall enormity of Renoir's ambitions. I like what he set out to do, and in most ways I was "on his side" as I watched the film.

And yet -- I find that it doesn't quite all add up for me. Most surprisingly the film seems to be without a very distinct visual style style beyond its overall professionalism. By 1939, the work of Hitchcock, Murnau, Lang, Flaherty, Lubitsch, Eisenstein, Whale, and others had already rampantly shown the potentials of visual style and expressive composition even in the talkie era. Renoir himself had already achieved a masterful job of subtextual visual strategy and meaningful compositions a few years earlier in his powerful GRAND ILLUSION. But that visual confidence is no way in evidence here. Is it because of how many different cinematographers there were?

I'm sure some will point out this or that scene and all the interesting objects within it, a certain fluidity of camera-work, intelligent use of depth-of-focus, interesting overhead shots in the hallway as people headed off to bed at the château, or some of the shots in the kitchen, the hunt or even the almost surreal party .

I will grant you that there is there are some fairly impressive shots now and then, with perhaps the opening scene of the reporter on the runway the most "showy." But after one viewing I have yet to be convinced that there is any distinctive visual personality to the picture. Professionalism, yes. The occasional interesting shot, yes. But the visual creativity or a bravura sense of cinematic identity from the director? I thought not.

But the underlying ideas are what is most important in RULES OF THE GAME, and I give Renoir plenty of credit for successfully exploring them in such a complex way. There are a lot of characters, and we have a strong sense of who they all are once up at the château (contrast this with GOSFORD PARK, where there are a couple of random young men among the upper class whose identities are still a bit obscure when the film is over).

Renoir seems to be balancing on a difficult tightrope of effectively telling a complex story with characters who are not truly meant to be "real" but rather to some degree caricatures in a larger satirical whole. This is perhaps the greatest ambition of the film, and while I'm not convinced it really works, I'm impressed with the diligent thoroughness of how he has attempted to construct it. Much has been said and written about how the public turned against the film when it was released, but I wonder if the real culprit was that the film seems a bit unmoored from any specific context from which an audience could approach it. It has numerous elements of farce, but it is not a farce. It has very witty lines and eventually an overabundance of buffoonery and implausible behavior (from nearly everyone concerned by the last reel or two), and yet it is not a comedy. During the hunt it juxtaposes shots of servants and gentry with rabbits and pheasants, and you understand the irony intended, but that scene, for example, seems a bit meandering in execution. Is it a fable? Not really that either. I'll admit that a work of art need not comfortably fit into any category, yet one still feels a bit bewildered by what Renoir expects you to make of this narrative, or how he expects you to process the characters.

For while certain things work beautifully and other things seem contrived, I often felt caught in a structure where Renoir was deceiving me into trying to relate to the characters as real people (and many of the fine performances help that tremendously), only to pull out the rug and say, in essence, "haha! I have a satirical agenda here which requires that the integrity of these characters is expendable." Yes, one could say that it is the paradox of that rug-pulling which represents the genius of the film. No one is immune to the absurdity at the heart of this script. But ultimately, I suspect that I either want the characters to seem genuine, OR I want the satire or farce to be the point. In this film, neither is exactly true.

I would see this film again, because I agree with others posting here that there is enough in it to warrant additional viewings. It is undeniably an essential landmark in the history of cinema. But I would also agree with those who say it is overrated. For me it lacks the honesty AND the visual distinction of GRAND ILLUSION, and also, despite its ambitions, lacks the basic humanity at the core of something like Bergman's SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT. Admittedly this film came first, but when you have a director with the visual pedigree, philosophically and genetically, of Jean Renoir, I expect a more satisfying sense of the auteur as filmmaker, not merely as writer and actor. Where this picture is concerned, Renoir succeeded best as a thinker, and secondly as its writer and as a director of actors. In terms of control of its visual sense and aesthetic as cinema, I'm not sure he did quite as effective a job as he might have.

This is on every great films list. I finally got to see it. There is great cinematography, cameras peering down hallways, people in constant motion as in an anthill. All the sordid relationships are brought to the screen. What I needed to know was whether this is really parody. The people are awful. They have no respect for their marriages and their trysts are happening all over the place. Servants are groping servants. Rich are groping rich. The gamekeeper, who looks a little like John Cleese is allowed to run through the house during a party, firing shots randomly, hoping to hit the man who is pursuing his wife. Is the ennui the whole point. Are they the rabbits that are hunted with their sexual appetite? I just see boredom and lack of commitment and its hard to separate this primitive morality from their silly, pointless lives. It also seems they have their own laws which they can make or break at will. Perhaps if I become more wise to what Renoir was trying to do, I will enjoy this more the next time I see it.

How can words do justice to this dream of a film? It is one of a dozen or so movies in all film history where just everything seems to have gone right. The casting is perfect, it is technically so seamless to make discussion of that side of the film crass, and the script is one of the great narratives in any medium of its century. The characterisation is absolutely matchless. I cannot think of a film with characters as rich as Lisette, the maid, la Chesnaye, the unfaithful aristocrat, Marceau the poacher, and, above all, Renoir's bumbling Octave who sets the tragic events in motion. Great dramatic art, of which this is arguably the cinema's finest example, is usually characterised by irony. La Règle du Jeu has it in spades. In the sensational final 25 minutes, when enemies become friends, and friends enemies, the cinema seems to take off in flight raising this great art to undreamed of heights. It is just so perfect, it makes you want to weep.

It is easy to see why Rules Of The Game is often mentioned in the same breath as Citizen Kane. The wonderfully smooth camera work, with its deep focus. The presence of Renoir who, like Welles, directed, wrote, and acted in the two films. But Rules is farce, and not broad farce like, say, Duck Soup or Million Dollar Legs. Critics adore it as a pre-war critique of French morals and failings. This is generous.

I don't wish to disparage the film because it is very famous, but honestly address its flaws, and give it a correct rating.

I write this after my second viewing. My opinion did not change. I doubt I will watch it again.

Renoir made a tight little romantic, or rather anti-romantic, comedy. And an angst-ridden, oversensitive, pre-WW2 French Bourgeosie, afraid of its own shadow, saw their worst character flaws fully illuminated exaggerated and satirized. Renoir, being an extremely smart man with keen observational skills and an open mind, simple condensed what he saw into a brilliant, multilinear film and poked fun at himself and each of the ludicrous but oh so human characters he invented. Misinterpreting the film as an attack on upper middle class culture of mid-20th century France, the film was very severely criticized, banned, and, inevitably, recognized as a masterpiece. How French.

Renoir's remarkably light character study of the pre-World War II French upper class entertainingly and humorously lampoons Western ideas of liberty, gentility, idleness and - the big game itself - love. Love, in this film doesn't REALLY have any fixed rules and is shown to consist of everything from a hormonal imbalance to self-loathing and apathetic contempt to an emotion of such power and purity that it could legitimately require the ultimate sacrifice. The concept of liberty, which is sort of an understated backdrop in this film, could be poignantly mistaken for decadence and self-indulgence. And as one might predict, only the least decadent characters (the servants) appear to have goals and some semblance of self-concepts.

Renoir's masterfully written and directed piece was filmed and is set in a time where the vestiges of pre-capitalist "high culture" still had a strong influence on social mobility in France, so 21st century globalists in particular may find the stark and very overtly illusory distinctions between his lordship, his Austrian noblewoman wife and his servants to be quaint but perhaps a little alien. Set against the medium of decadence and directionlessness manifested in spurious and meaningless love/lust/sex/desire the film presents us with a cabaret of likable yet mostly despicable and extremely well-acted archetypes.

La Règle du Jeu presents a tangled web of relationships of every kind set against a social gathering at a country manor presided over by Marcel Dalio's sympathetic (and pathetic) but rather hollow lordship and his exotic lady, an Austrian noble played by Nora Gregor. Renoir himself plays the older Octave, who appears to be the only person at the party who has set himself out of the "the game" - friend to all lover of none. But even this laudable status inevitably breaks down in the tumult of rampaging aimlessness concentrated by the big party. The serving staff, though perhaps more honest and direct about themselves, are an obliquely angled mirror of the bourgeouis house guests in virtually every way. A few cross-class relationships will stick with you and are worth paying special attention to - the extremely condescending ones between the lord and his new domestic (memorably played by Julien Carette) and the lady and her chambermaid (Paulette Dubost) come to mind. In both cases, the servants have the upper hand in nearly every way, but they earn that position by subtly disguising their own wills as sound decision making by their "superiors".

La Règle du Jeu is a beautiful film. The audience is bombarded with continuous action, a very attractive and memorable cast that is in constant motion, gorgeous settings, and extremely well-choreographed and often very long continuous shots in which three or four plots are introduced, climax and close in the space of a few minutes. It deserves its reputation as a great film.

This is the film I usually think of as my favorite of all time. It is perhaps the closest that cinema has come to the perfection of a Mozart opera. I'm thinking of "Marriage of Figaro" and "Cosi fan Tutte" in particular as the Mozart operas most closely related to Renoir's cinema masterpiece. Like those operas, there is a masterfully proportioned blend of outrageous humor and deep pathos. It is a comedy, but it is a particularly civilized form of comedy that you will not encounter in another film, except maybe in some films of Charlie Chaplin. Above every human situation in the convoluted plot there is the all-pervading sadness for a fading civilization about to be extinguished. The ambiguities of that civilization are perfectly captured in two hours of cinematic heaven. Everything about this film is extraordinary, and I long to see it issued on DVD, and only Criterion will be able to do it justice. I hope they will turn to it soon!

Every now and then, a firefight breaks out on one of the boards about this film. Amid the pomposity of the latest, DFC-2 thoughtfully wrote: "This is one film, perhaps because of its director and precarious early history, that has taken on a halo and the requisite critical support to nullify any criticism. The only question is: Is it truly that much better or different or has hyperbole and elaborate rationalisation been canonised as truth?" Which is the real heart of the issue when it comes to why I found myself taking against this film so violently.

For many people it's not enough to like the film - the dissenters have to be proved wrong. Objective opinion isn't allowed. Only acceptance of a proscribed opinion is acceptable. Anything less is a fault not of the film or a difference in personal taste but of the character of the viewer. I was involved in one dispute over on European Film about this a couple of years ago, dismissed as one of the 'army of knuckle-dragging Nantherthal British morons' that poster Paul Panzer was so fond of racially berating because it was impossible for him to accept anyone else's opinion of the film as being as valid as his own. The reason for the anti-British sentiments was, I think, because it had just been reissued in the UK and done very, very badly at the box-office. Unlike other posters, he didn't claim my fellow soldiers were unable to understand it but that we had not seen it at all because no-one who saw it could not like it.

I recently posted on a thread about overrated films, and listed this as one of the two worst films I've ever seen (BREATHLESS was the other, but that's another story). I just thought it was a bad film, plain and simple, more CARRY ON UP THE Château than high art. There are hundreds of worse films, but unlike RULES, no-one is claiming THE WINTER WARRIOR or Timbo Hines' WAR OF THE WORLDS are all-time greats, so the fall from expectation to reality isn't so hard. Thing is, would I have had such a low opinion of the film if it weren't for the following factors?

1. The film's reputation as one of the five greatest films of all time. I've never found any reason to agree with this. It just creates a gulf of disappointment when it just turns out to be a silly bedtime farce. I think LA GRAND ILLUSION suffers from the same problem, although its a much better film, BTW. It's as over-hyped as any summer blockbuster popcorn flick.

2. The arrogance of many of its defenders. Now I DON'T mean all the posters here who like the film. Some of them have been very reasonable about it, some do see that people have their reasons for disliking it. But there's still the stink that this is a film you HAVE to like to be taken seriously.

3. The insecurity of many of its defenders. Again, this does not apply to all the posters here. But there is a desperate need to cling to the supremacy of one set opinion as a mark of, to paraphrase CFK, being the 'right kind of person/film buff.' The phrase Emperor's New Clothes ring any bells?

4. Snobbery towards the initial audience. The whole thing about audiences of the day 'getting it wrong' or not understanding the film. Who says they didn't? Maybe they understood it too well, and THAT's why it flopped? Maybe they too found it's artificiality boring, it's acting bad, it's plot plain silly.

5. Reading too much into the history. We keep on getting parallels to Nazi Germany and the assumption it's a comment on fascism and indifference. I don't buy that for one second. Schumacher isn't some proto-Nazi. He's a very French figure of ridicule. He's not even German but one of those Alsatian Franco-Germans whose nationality changes with the borders after each new war. What he represents is the kind of old fashioned moral puritanism that later found its self-flagellating expression in the Vichy government and its moral renewal/hypocrisy. He's not a prophecy but a reflection of a state of mind the French flit to and fro between over the years as the wind changes direction. You'll find the same thing in America with the Moral Majority.

This is a film that needs to be seen with low expectations and an open mind. The more people insist on its undeniable greatness, the worse it looks, the more it disappoints.

Bottom line, to me the film is just another country house sex comedy. It's just the accident of history that has seen its importance blown out of all proportion as people try to explain away its failure and create a myth that the film cannot live up to for many people. And a lot of people on that long-forgotten firefight disliked the film just as a lot liked it. It divides opinions, which is one thing in its favour. But I have found that some of the people it appeals to are the very kind of narrow-minded self-important snobs obsessed with invisible rules that the film takes the p*ss out of so amateurishly. The best joke in the film is that it appeals to EXACTLY the kind of people it is attacking!

Let it be said once more that The Rules of the Game is an astounding achievement: an all-around entertaining and insightful look at early 20th century French bourgeois and their efforts to find peace, love and happiness. It was not well-received at the time of its release, which was the eve of World War II, but it holds up today as one of the great films in cinema history. This may be for two particular reasons: the incredibly fluid and masterful camera work and the very witty and humorous screenplay.

Although these certainly are valid reasons to praise this film, perhaps the greatest achievement Renoir was able to accomplish here was his insightful look at human nature. While able to break down the social walls that seemingly separate the upper-class from the lower, this film brilliantly showcases all people as being at times complacent, duplicitous, arrogant, jealous, flirtatious and a flurry of other feelings and emotions that color life the way it is. No one is above the law or the 'rules' that should be implemented. It has been concluded by several that there are only three characters here that actually adhere to these so-called 'rules': the young aviator, the rejected groundskeeper and the Jewish aristocrat presiding over this weekend getaway. Though they may attempt to remain faithful and hold their heads proudly, their own conflicting arrangements and desires get in the way, allowing for a most confusing and breathtaking conclusion.

The final 20 minutes of this film is truly something to witness. It is a sparkling achievement of memorable acting, the best camera work possible and dialogue and scenarios that cannot ever be imitated or improved. Words escape me in actually describing the beauty and greatness of it all. Suffice it to say that this is certainly required Renoir viewing as well as film history. Many subsequent great directors, including Orson Welles, Robert Altman and a plethora of others were inspired by Renoir and his uncanny look at humanity. That view is never more clear or as pointed as in The Rules of the Game.