A tragicomic view from the top

How often do you get to see a classic of cinema on the big screen?

This weekend, you’ll have that opportunity. The Northwest Film Center is screening Jean Renoir’s critically acclaimed French satire The Rules of the Game (1939) this Saturday and Sunday.

Often heralded as among the greatest films of all time, Rules is a simply told story of complex characters. It follows members of the French elite and their servants as they convene for a weekend get-together at a countryside chateau. It is a comedy about human nature, in which romances unravel and infidelities come to light.

The film opens with the heroic return to France of the aviator, Andre Jurieux. His friend Octave receives him, as do a wave of reporters and admirers. But Andre is shocked and dismayed when he learns the love of his life, Christine, is not among them—understandable, considering Christine is married to the Marquis Robert de la Cheyniest.

For her part, Christine listens idly to the radio transmission of the aviator’s return as she prepares for a date with her husband. She seems pretty happy where she is in life and doesn’t notice Andre’s on-air groans about her absence.

Robert is aware of Andre’s feelings for his wife. And since Christine is trustworthy, he’s even a little sympathetic toward the hero’s feelings. Nevertheless, he’s leery when Octave asks the Marquis to invite Andre to the chateau. Robert invites the aviator despite his misgivings.

The French gentry arrive at the chateau, along with Octave and Andre, neither of whom truly belong. The guests receive them warmly, though, and Christine lays rumors of infidelity to rest by declaring that Andre is just a friend. That settled, everybody starts to party.

And for French aristocrats, that means afternoons spent sweeping the countryside with rifles, killing every bird or mammal in sight. They follow up their hunting spree with a round of plays, before the entire house devolves into a mess of debauchery and drunken brawling. Even the servants get involved.

Before it’s all over, the groundskeeper is chasing the poacher from room to room, pistol blazing, even as the aviator trades fists with patrons and host alike.

Christine is always in the clouds, flitting from one man to the next, making plans to run off with each. It all resolves itself with a man being gunned down in cold blood—an incident brushed off, almost whimsically, as an accident.

What’s striking about Rules is its command of an eclectic spread of genres. It’s a comedy of manners, revealing the excess of elite society with staccato wit, yet climaxing in a juvenile explosion of slapstick humor. It flirts with romance, but only playfully. It’s also intimate in characterizations and visual technique. Long stretches of seamless footage and brightly lit scenes in deep focus make the film feel fluid and natural.

Renoir released Rules in 1939, and early audiences hated it. They spurned its parody of French gentry, and the French Vichy government even banned the film.

Critics eventually came around to embrace it as a masterpiece, however, praising both its technique and its social critique. The film narrowly survived its own time, but its relevance remains with us today, especially as the non-elites of the world are now taking to the streets to protest the excesses of the 21st century elites.