The 1,000 Greatest Films of All Time: No. 5

5. The Rules of the Game

1939, France D: Jean Renoir

At first glance, it may appear strange that what looks to all purposes like a silly little French sex comedy could almost begin a riot. But that’s precisely what happened when Jean Renoir premiered his newest film in Paris, 1939. Not only did the audience boo the movie, but some people began to fight, and one patron actually attempted to set fire to the theater. Seems as though Renoir just may have struck a nerve . . .

I don’t know what the most extraordinary thing about this mind-bending masterpiece is. Is it its sheer audacious daring, its meticulously baroque plotting, its fast-pace humor, its insane cast of characters, its pure classical beauty, its impossibly byzantine camera movement, or its ultimate sense of the sad dignity and grace of humanity. I think, perhaps, its director’s greatest accomplishment is to keep all of these balls up in the air at the same time, while showing himself as a character in the center of it all, utterly helpless, yet trying to keep it all from flying apart!

The Rules of the Game is the ultimate ensemble cinematic triumph. It moves to its own internal rhythm like no other. There is no other movie that even comes close to sustaining its remarkably balanced, yet seemingly chaotic action so smoothly aligned to sheer perfection. It is one film that reveals more and more complexity and layers of irony with every successive viewing. In short, the more you watch it, the greater it becomes, the more it unfolds its riches. More remarkable still, it not only becomes more funny and more sad, but more shocking every time you see it.

And it was shock that accompanied its appearance right on the eve of the beginning of the Second World War. For without a single mention of the growing conflagration on the immediate horizon, Renoir unveiled so all the world could see, the frivolous, stupid, empty behavior of the idle and pretentious bourgeoisie of Europe who, by their very oblivion to the reality of their times, had let things come to such a horrific, unstoppable path. It is no wonder that Paris reacted with indignation and violence. Nobody wants to stare into a mirror that large and unflattering.

Actually all of the classes of French society take in on the chin in the film. The servants ape their masters in matters of sex, seduction and duplicity. But the greatest sin of all, in Renoir’s vision, is the one of sheer negligence - the act of looking the other way. When one must play one’s role, regardless of the implications or the outcome - even if the result is the tragic destruction of a human life - how can any one person be truly indicted? This was Renoir’s great transgression - he appeared with precisely the right message that absolutely nobody wanted to hear. We are the enemy.

At the very center of the two acts of criss-crossing lovers, deceits, cheats, lies, performances public and private, the film bursts wildly, appallingly and deafeningly to its horrific and devastating centerpiece. The hosts and their proper and distinguished guests all traipse casually out into the beautiful winter outdoors. Servants rush through the woods with sticks, frightening birds, rabbits and other wildlife ahead of them, until they emerge, unprotected, into an open area where the carefree, thoughtless humans mow them down in an epic, high-speed bloodbath of brutal carnage. I don’t care how you feel about hunting - after witnessing this vicious ritual enacted by such shallow, callous dilettantes, you may be tempted to start a riot yourself.