La Règle du Jeu [The Rules of the Game] ***** (1939, Marcel Dalio, Nora Grégor, Jean Renoir, Mila Parély, Julien Carette, Paulette Dubost, Roland Toutain) – Classic Movie Review 2791

Co-writer/director Jean Renoir’s famous great 1939 French world cinema classic is a poignant, penetrating social comedy set in a grand chateau in the country in France at the onset of World War Two. Guests arrive there for a party, but their warm greetings hide their real feelings and secrets.

There Renoir critically observes the lavish French bourgeois life and the interactions between host, rich guests and poor servants. Thereby the director finds himself skilfully shifting from romance to tragedy, from realism to fantasy and from past to present.

This clever, complex and daring film was by no means always considered a world cinema classic, indeed it had a hostile reception in 1939. One patron actually lit a newspaper and tried to burn the cinema it was playing in and there were threats to other cinemas showing it. This prompted Renoir to recut the film several times.

Then it was banned by the French a month after its original release as being too demoralising because of the impending war. If only films could still be banned for being demoralising! [Only kidding!] And then, when the Germans took over France the following year, they banned it as well and burnt many of the prints. If only films we don’t like could still be burnt! [Only kidding!] 

Then Allied planes accidentally destroyed the original negatives and it was thought to be a lost film. But in 1956, admirers found enough pieces of the film scattered throughout France to reconstitute it with Renoir’s help. Renoir said only one minor scene from the original cut was missing. It was then re-released in 1956 and so it was only then that the film was finally acclaimed by critics to be the masterpiece it most certainly is. In a remarkable story, it survived by the skin of its teeth and finally triumphed.

It stars Marcel Dalio, Nora Grégor, Jean Renoir, Mila Parély, Julien Carette, Paulette Dubost and Roland Toutain. Also in the cast are Odette Talazac, Pierre Magnier and Pierre Nay.

Roland Toutain plays record-setting aviator André Jurieux, who is in love with Christine(Nora Grégor), the wife of aristocrat Marquis Robert de la Cheyniest (Marcel Dalio), who is having an affair with Geneviève de Marras (Mila Parély). Christine and Robert are the hosts of the party at their the country home. Renoir plays Octave, who gets André invited to the party.

It is produced by Jean Renoir and the production manager is the director’s nephew, Claude Renoir. This was their first film after they set up their own production company, Les Nouvelles Editions Françaises, following the success of La Grande Illusion (1937) and La Bête Humaine (1938).

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2791

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