At the time of its disastrous premiere, Renoir was crushed, and he drastically re-edited the film down from 94 minutes to 81 minutes in the hopes of salvaging it, but it was to no avail. During the war, it was banned by both the French government and the occupying Nazis, and it wasn’t until the late 1950s, when it was “reconstructed” into a new 106-minute version by two film buffs with Renoir’s blessing, that the film truly came into its own and was recognized for the masterpiece that it is.

Renoir made The Rules of the Game as a blunt critique of French society, particularly the snobbish upper crust--the haute bourgeoisie--whose monetary security afforded them not only a lavish lifestyle, but the blind option of ignoring the chaos of the world around them by insulating themselves in their own silly, ultimately meaningless preoccupations. The “game” of the title is love, not in the sense of true, abiding emotion felt between two people that lasts a lifetime, but rather the amorous adventures of seduction and betrayal. The “rules” of the game boil down to the idea that it must all be in fun; it must remain a “game.” The second any genuine emotion infiltrates this world of petty sex, everything threatens to come toppling down.

This is precisely what happens when a young aviator, André Jurieux (Roland Toutain), falls in love with Christine (Nora Gregor), the wife of the Marquis Robert de la Cheyniest (Marcel Dalio). Robert, meanwhile, is having an affair with a wealthy socialite, Geneviève de Marras (Mila Parély), despite the fact that he feels true affection for his wife and wants to end the affair. André is heartbroken that Christine does not return his affections, particularly after he makes a daring flight across the Atlantic just for her and she fails to show up at the airfield when he lands. Seeing that André is near suicidal in his despair, his friend Octave (Jean Renoir) convinces Christine that André should be invited to a hunting party her husband is hosting at his country chateau.

The majority of the film takes place at the chateau, where the hunt is on both literally and figuratively. Renoir introduces a new kink into the plot with a second love triangle, this one between the chateau’s blustery gameskeeper, Schumacher (Gaston Modot); his wife, Lisette (Paulette Dubost), who is Christine’s maid; and Marceau (Julien Carette), a local poacher whom Robert hires as a domestic. Thus, the film centers around two interlocking love triangles, one among the wealthy and the other among their servants, which allows Renoir to show how, despite their obvious class-based differences, there is much similarity in their amorous preoccupations. The film shows that the serving class has essentially absorbed the attitudes of their employers, and the only difference between them is that the servants don’t feel a need to maintain a façade of propriety, which is illustrated by Marceau’s shamelessly chasing Lisette around the kitchen.

When it was first released, The Rules of the Game was roundly criticized for its pessimistic view of French society, and the government banned it because it felt it was demoralizing to the country. The film has also suffered criticisms of its plot, namely that it often comes across as clumsily constructed and phony. In a sense, that is a valid critique, something Renoir’s most ardent admirers would likely concede. Even André Bazin, the influential French critic and theorist who named The Rules of the Game as his all-time favorite film, wrote that “Renoir himself has never been able to ‘construct’ a scenario … Renoir has always been more concerned with the creation of characters and situations in which they could express themselves rather than with a story.”

This tendency of Renoir’s is obvious in the somewhat arbitrary nature of the plot of The Rules of the Game and the manner in which it unfolds. The hunt itself is a good example, as plotwise it serves no purpose. In fact, the flow of the film up until that point is literally interrupted by the hunting sequence, which differs insistently in both tone and style from what came before and what comes after. Yet, it is crucial because it is both the film’s central metaphor and a perfect situation in which the characters can express their true selves. Renoir spends a great deal of time in the middle of the film showing us the wealthy weekenders gamely shooting down rabbits and birds, not for the meat, but merely for the sport. The blithe manner in which the bourgeois hunters flush out the animals and gun them down comes to represent their insular, self-interested approach to life. Little matters to them except for what brings them pleasure, consequences be damned.

And the ultimate consequence in The Rules of the Game turns out to be cold-blooded murder, which Renoir views as the ultimate sacrifice needed for the haute bourgeoisie to maintain their way of life. The rules had been broken, so someone had to pay. If that sounds deeply cynical, it is; yet Renoir, despite his clear intention of social critique (despite a disclaimer at the beginning of the film arguing otherwise), never makes everything so simple as black and white. While the vast majority of his characters are deeply flawed and, quite simply, rather unlikable, he never goes so far as to make them complete cads. They lie, cheat, and betray all in their own petty self-interests, yet Renoir manages to maintain a balance of humanism amid all the darkness of his scathing black comedy.

It is Octave, played by Renoir himself, who says the film’s most crucial line of dialogue: “The awful thing about life is this: Everyone has their reasons.” That is, although we can stand back and judge the pettiness of the characters’ immoral lives, in their minds they have justified their pursuits, just as we have justified ours. Every action has a “reason,” and therefore, in some sense, it can be justified. It creates a vicious circle of moral relativism, which is perhaps what Renoir recognized as being most dangerous of all, especially at a time when the world was on the brink of complete annihilation. It is a lesson that we would do well to heed today and in the future.

Copyright ©2011 James Kendrick

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