Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game has been part of the film canon for so long that it’s valuable to remind audiences how gloriously alive and just plain fun it is. Low comedy walks hand and hand with tragedy and beauty throughout the film, which is frothy one minute, nearly apocalyptic the next—and so you’re never fully allowed to gather your bearings. It has a tone that could be symbolized by the escalating merry-go-round that prominently plays into the climax of Strangers on a Train—up and down, all around and seemingly totally out of control. The film, as Paul Schrader says in this Criterion edition’s liner notes, represents all of cinema’s possibilities in 106 minutes.
That controlled chaos is partially driven by anger and despair. Renoir often said that the film was a response to his frustrations with the bourgeoisie at a time...
That controlled chaos is partially driven by anger and despair. Renoir often said that the film was a response to his frustrations with the bourgeoisie at a time...
- 7/5/2023
- by Chuck Bowen
- Slant Magazine
"Let the game begin." Janus Films has revealed a brand new trailer for the 4K restoration and re-release of the Jean Renoir 1939 classic The Rules of the Game, considered one of the best films ever made despite opening to very negative reviews. The film depicts members of upper-class French society and their servants just before the beginning of World War II, showing their moral callousness on the eve of destruction. At la Colinière, the deceptively idyllic country estate of a wealthy Parisian aristocrat, a selection of society’s finest gather for a rural sojourn and shooting party, and reveal themselves to be absurdly, almost primitively, cruel and vapid. Starring Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost, Mila Parély, Marcel Dalio, Julien Carette, Roland Toutain, Gaston Modot, and Pierre Magnier. The film received terribly negative reviews and even provoked near riots in Paris upon its initial release. As a result, Renoir cut 23 minutes from the film at the time.
- 12/22/2022
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Le bonheur (1934) may be Marcel L'Herbier's best talkie—even if it is, its existence should be enough to disprove the widely and uncritically accepted assumption that the director went into a steep decline with the coming of sound.
In fact, the bigger problem is that not enough people know his work at all. In the silent era, he quite deliberately competed with Abel Gance in terms of cinematic spectacle, swinging his camera from ropes and wheeling it on a lighting stand, while also pursuing a cinema of elaborate, stylized production design. There's something inscrutable about him: he shuttles from genre trifles to experimental epics, and his true sensibility may be glimpsed as much in the former as the latter. Perhaps his homosexuality, an open secret in the film business, led him to to employ layers of careful coding more than most commercial filmmakers.
L'Herbier's early talkies include the lighter-than-air...
In fact, the bigger problem is that not enough people know his work at all. In the silent era, he quite deliberately competed with Abel Gance in terms of cinematic spectacle, swinging his camera from ropes and wheeling it on a lighting stand, while also pursuing a cinema of elaborate, stylized production design. There's something inscrutable about him: he shuttles from genre trifles to experimental epics, and his true sensibility may be glimpsed as much in the former as the latter. Perhaps his homosexuality, an open secret in the film business, led him to to employ layers of careful coding more than most commercial filmmakers.
L'Herbier's early talkies include the lighter-than-air...
- 10/4/2012
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
The Rules of the Game
Directed by Jean Renoir
Written by Jean Renoir
France, 1939
F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously wrote in his 1925 short story, Rich Boy, that “the rich are different from you and me”, to which Ernest Hemingway trenchantly retorted, “yes, they have more money”.
Under the simplicity of this quote and counter-quote parley hides a grain of truth inherent to both. Yes, the rich have more money, and for that very reason, they live differently from the rest of society. With their abundant riches and excess wealth, they can afford to do things most others cannot. For one, they can afford to play games.
Fitzgerald himself masterfully portrayed the hedonistic lifestyles of the rich and famous in The Great Gatsby, and in the realm of literature, it lacks a suitable rival in that regard. But in cinema, the very same notions and ideas were also well accomplished by the storied French filmmaker,...
Directed by Jean Renoir
Written by Jean Renoir
France, 1939
F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously wrote in his 1925 short story, Rich Boy, that “the rich are different from you and me”, to which Ernest Hemingway trenchantly retorted, “yes, they have more money”.
Under the simplicity of this quote and counter-quote parley hides a grain of truth inherent to both. Yes, the rich have more money, and for that very reason, they live differently from the rest of society. With their abundant riches and excess wealth, they can afford to do things most others cannot. For one, they can afford to play games.
Fitzgerald himself masterfully portrayed the hedonistic lifestyles of the rich and famous in The Great Gatsby, and in the realm of literature, it lacks a suitable rival in that regard. But in cinema, the very same notions and ideas were also well accomplished by the storied French filmmaker,...
- 7/4/2012
- by Justin Li
- SoundOnSight
Stupéfiants (1932) is interesting in itself, to a moderate degree. It's even more interesting for the lives around it, but more of that later.
Yes, the title literally means "stupefiers," and it's a drug drama, a French-German co-production delivering German thriller entertainment with a Gallic lightness of touch. The hero, Jean Murat, is the kind of energetic superman beloved of the German cinema of the era, with some of the agility that distinguished Roland Toutain in L'Herbier's crime romances of the period—one moment where he swings from a crane adds a welcome dash of Doug Fairbanks excitement to the proceedings: one watches keenly for the rest of the movie in case he repeats it, but sadly he doesn't.
Murat's sister has become addicted to drugs, and Murat embarks on his adventures first to save her, then to avenge her. Along the way, the movie delivers some surprisingly accurate behavior from the addict,...
Yes, the title literally means "stupefiers," and it's a drug drama, a French-German co-production delivering German thriller entertainment with a Gallic lightness of touch. The hero, Jean Murat, is the kind of energetic superman beloved of the German cinema of the era, with some of the agility that distinguished Roland Toutain in L'Herbier's crime romances of the period—one moment where he swings from a crane adds a welcome dash of Doug Fairbanks excitement to the proceedings: one watches keenly for the rest of the movie in case he repeats it, but sadly he doesn't.
Murat's sister has become addicted to drugs, and Murat embarks on his adventures first to save her, then to avenge her. Along the way, the movie delivers some surprisingly accurate behavior from the addict,...
- 1/5/2012
- MUBI
The Rules of the Game Directed by: Jean Renoir Written by: Jean Renoir Starring: Marcel Dalio, Nora Gregor, Roland Toutain, Jean Renoir This week I finally caught up with a movie that many consider to be one of the greatest films in the history of cinema; Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game. While I'm not sure it would top my own personal list of all-time favourites, it's certainly a fantastic piece of cinema that's full of humour, drama, and some wonderful characters. The film begins with a radio broadcaster interviewing aviator André Jurieux, who'd just landed after accomplishing a record setting flight around the world. His friend Octave (played by Jean Renoir) informs André that the woman for which he dedicated his flight didn't show up to greet him. We eventually learn that Christine, the woman over which André is obsessing, is actually the wife of an aristocrat named Robert de la Cheyniest.
- 11/29/2011
- by Jay C.
- FilmJunk
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