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Is it better to challenge convention or embrace it?

This question was at the core of a spirited argument I had recently with a close friend. We were discussing a film we had both seen that encompassed a political issue at its core (Kimberly Peirce’s Stop-Loss). My friend and I were at odds with each other on whether a movie dealing with a sensitive issue was more effective when it challenged its audience and threatened to make them uncomfortable, or when it took a lighter approach and tried to be more balanced in its approach. In arguing against the film and the way Peirce approached it, I argued vehemently that the greatest films, the ones that truly inspire change and stand the test of time, are the ones that risk offense.

I found myself revisiting that consideration having recently picked up my own copy of Jean Renoir’s 1939 masterpiece The Rules of the Game (La Règle du jeu), a film that was buried on its release and is since regarded as one of the greatest films of all time.

Christine’s paramour takes the more unconventional guise of André Jurieux, wealthy adventurer and pilot. André has just completed a record setting solo flight to rival Charles Lindbergh. When he lands, he finds out from his friend Octave (Renoir) that Christine is not there to greet André on his return, a fact that leaves André devastated and confessing his love and sorrow indiscreetly on national radio.

Octave is a servant in the employ of Robert and knows of André’s love for Christine. He also wants very much to protect Christine, having watched her grow up while studying with Christine’s father in their home of Austria. It also happens that Octave loves Christine, and hopes to help her do the right thing within society’s norms if he can not be with her himself.

Octave lights upon an idea that he hopes will let everyone save face and get all matters straightened out. Robert and Christine are hosting a hunting party weekend at their country estate La Coliniére in Sologne, with several members of their social circle (Geneviève included). Octave convinces Robert to invite André to the party, hoping that will allow Christine time to set André straight regarding their relationship. At the same time, Robert hopes to do the honorable thing by Christine regarding Geneviève. Nothing plays out as simply as that, however, and the results prove to be tragic.

That set of circumstances alone would make for a weighty character study. Renoir raises the stakes with his story by setting up parallel storylines involving the servant class that caters to these members of the social elite. In addition to Octave’s unfulfilled love for Christine, there are issues with himself and Christine’s maid Lisette (Paulette Dubost). Octave and Lisette have had their own dalliances, as Lisette works for Christine in their residence in Paris as her husband Edouard (Gaston Modot) labors as the gamekeeper at La Coliniére. Edouard hopes for Lisette to come and live with him in Sologne, but Lisette refuses to do so.

With the arrival of the hunting party, Edouard hopes to convince Lisette to stay while they have time together during the weekend. His efforts become complicated by Marceau (Julien Carette), a poacher Edouard catches trapping rabbits on the grounds. Edouard would have Marceau arrested but Robert intervenes and fulfills Marceau’s ambitions of being a house servant at La Coliniére. Marceau attempts to integrate himself into his newly elevated social class and winds up catching Lisette’s eye in the bargain. As the entanglements play out, the differences and similarities of the servant class and upper class are brought into sharp relief.

The film itself has a rich story that Renoir skillfully unveils both behind the camera as director and in front of it as an actor. Situations that seem on first glance to be cut and dried as to right and wrong become more complicated as the expectations of the characters and their classes are unveiled. All the players have attributes that you can respect and traits that make you want to throttle them. This is a testament to the skill of the actors portraying them, most all of whom will be unfamiliar to American audiences who do not have an affinity for French cinema of the period.

The film is also a technical marvel. It is most noted for Renoir’s use of deep focus, where the composition of the shot creates scenes where there is action in both the foreground and background that is of importance. One scene in particular stands out, shot from the end of a long hall as various members of the party prepare to turn in for the night. Various doors open and close as characters move from room to room and exchange comments in the process.

It evoked memories of a scenario frequently used in the cartoons I saw as a child, where the characters would run back and forth through doors leading to seemingly unconnected rooms. So much is going on in that one shot and yet it is easy to pick out the important aspects of every interaction. Order drawn from the chaos at work. The first time I saw it, I was floored and it still makes me smile watching how well it is executed despite my familiarity with it.

For all that the film has going for it, one would think it to be a certain hit on release. And yet, the film bombed miserably. It was very nearly lost for good, with the negatives being destroyed during the Nazi invasion in WWII. After the war, the film was reconstructed from prints that had been locked in storage and assembled with Renoir’s assistance.

Commenting on the films poor initial reception, Renoir wrote in My Life and My Films:

One does not really know what a film is until it has been edited. The first showings of La Règle du jeu filled me with misgiving. It is a war film, and yet there is no reference to the war. Beneath its seemingly innocuous appearance, the story attacks the very structure of society. Yet all I thought about at the beginning was nothing avante-garde by a good little orthodox film. People go to the cinema in the hope of forgetting their everyday problems, and it was precisely their own worries that I plunged them into. The imminence of war made them even more thin-skinned. I depicted pleasant, sympathetic characters, but showed them in a society in the process of disintergration, so that they were defeated at the outset, like Stahremberg and his peasants (ed. A reference to actress Grégor’s husband, who founded an anti-Hitler peasant party in Austria).The audience recognized this. The truth is that they recognized themselves. People who commit suicide do not care to do it in front of witnesses.

That gets at the heart of that which Renoir was dissecting through his film. It held a mirror up to the face of the society that Renoir found contemptible and corrupt in his time and showed the illusions of their pretensions for what they were.

The scene in which Robert meets the poacher Marceau for the first time really spares no part of the social spectrum in showing them at their most venal. Robert positively drips with the snobbery of the upper crust, being shown a rabbit snare for the first time and finding it to be something quaint and unique, rather than the extent to which the have-nots must go to to eat. In response, Marceau plays the huckster to the hilt. It is obvious he is playing up the situation to ingratiate himself to Robert. Everyone is playing the angles.

And Renoir shows that the prejudices of the working class are no less petty than those of the bourgeois. It is obvious that Edouard wants to take Marceau down as much to maintain his status over someone as it is about maintaining the law of the manor. Likewise at a long dinner scene for the servants as they talk about the flaws of their respective employers. The workers come off as snotty as those they work for. It is no wonder that everyone who viewed it at its initial release panned it. Who is there really that one could root for?

Yet that aspect is what in the end makes the film so effective to me. That it lays bare every character flaw and lets the audience see no one is without sin means that it provides a snapshot of a society that may wind up being the beneficiary of hagiography as time passes. The good old days are never as good in the present as they are when you can gloss the imperfections over with time and poor memory.

The adage is that “the only rule for which there are no exceptions is that there are exceptions to every rule.” Renoir’s film shows just how destructive to a society adhering to rules and convention can be when it goes against the grain of common sense. That he could do so unflinchingly is why this film stands up as a masterpiece even now almost seventy years after the fact.

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