THE RULES OF THE GAME

The Rules of the Game (1939)

Director: Jean Renoir

Writers: Jean Renoir

Stars: Marcel Dalio, Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost

Budget: $5,500,500

Production Company: Nouvelles Editions de Films (NEF)

            The Rules of the Game is a French feature film directed by Jean Renoir.  This film takes a scrutinizing look at the upper class and their social and economic life.  Many aspects of lifestyle, relationship, attitudes, and activities of leisure are exposed.  Compared to the poorer, less privileged classes.  These characters are shown to be fickle, flaky, and un-loyal to each other.  This film begins as a pilot named, Andre Juriew returns from setting a flight record.  There is a party for him at the house of a wealthy aristocrat, Robert de la Cheyniest.  Andre is in love with Mr. Cheynist’s wife, Christine.  Mr. Cheynist is having an affair with Genevive de Marras and is shown in the film trying to break it off.  These affairs lead to a type of complicated love triangle that leads Christine to consider her options in other men as she realizes about her husband’s affair.  Christine is shown in a scene where she encourages Genevive to stay and entertain her husband when she prepares to leave the house saying, “We should help each other out.” To me, this is a desperate action taken by Christine out of fear of losing her position as Robert’s wife.  This film exposes the liaise faire attitude the rich French had toward relationships and marriage.  Unlike their strict American counterparts who usually marry and have clear rules against infidelity and adultery.  The sexual freeness among the men causes the women much anxiety because their position and status is not guaranteed if the men cheat and fall in and out of love so easily.  The thesis of this film is that the bourgeoise and proletariat had two distinctive definitions of love.  "Proletarian ideology cannot accept exclusiveness and "all-embracing love."  The proletariat is not filled with horror and moral indignation at the man forms of facets of 'winged Eros' in the way that the hypocritical bourgeoisie  is; on the contrary, it tries to direct these emotions, which it sees as the result of complex social circumstances, into channels which are advantageous to the class during the struggle for and the construction of communist society." (236, Smith) These are two types of love; bourgeoisie love and proletariat love.  The film, Rules of the Game displays proletariat love.  “The bourgeoisie was well aware of this, and in attempt to create a stable family bourgeoisie ideology erected “married love” as a moral virtue; to be a “good family man” was, in the eyes of the bourgeoisie, an important and valuable quality. What is the proletariat’s idea of love? Each class tries to fill the conception of love with a moral content that suits its own interests.”  These types of relationships shown in Rules of the Game were not love, but instead people not in touch with their real feelings or who they really were, but instead, earthly pursuits of status, power, appearances and prestige; a type of perversion.  “This deviation towards unhealthy carnality takes relationships far from their source in the biological instinct.  On the other hand, over the centuries and with the changes in human social life and culture; a web of emotional and intellectual experience has come to surround the physical attraction of the sexes.” (236, Smith) Other rules that were exposed in this film were rules of social class.  In the scene were a newly hired servant sits at the table where they were all eating showed that he could not sit next to Christne or Robert because of his low class status, eventhough he was once a business owner and did very well economically before the start of the war. 

          This film was made about a time in history before French women were liberated.  They were very dependent on men to define who they were.  Women were not allowed to be breadwinners or the main income providers which would have freed them from being sexual muses for men.  Back then, a woman’s sexuality was all she had and her goal to survival was to marry rich. The men in this film are seen as relying on their wealth and social position for power.  During this time before WWII, men had a lot of anxieties because they feared of losing that power which allowed them to control women.  Some of the reasons why the bourgeoisie wanted to hold onto their lifestyle so much.  People wanted to escape into pleasure seeking and “the good life,” especially after suffering through the First World War.  “The 1920’s were years when many people, like Virginia Woolf, craved peace and hoped to distance themselves from Europe’s legacy of destruction.” (187, Smith)

            French men during this period of the 1930’s were full of anxieties as their masculinity was becoming threatened and challenged by other countries who had more aggressive and “manly” rulers.  “Also in 1922, Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy with the help of his fascist bands of Black Shirts.  His intention was to restore manly vigor and the mighty Roman Empire through war and conquest.” (188, Smith)  Rules of the game exposed these many insecurities so much that it made French people feel anxiety and pull the film from theatres.  “Rules of the Game exacerbated anxieties, and its confrontation with audiences was powerful and uncompromising, prompting French viewers to excoriate the film” (26, Bates) During the 1930 is France, a new genre called 'poetic realism' was created by Jacques Feyder. Poetic realism is recreated realism, stylised and studio bound, rather than approaching the soci-realism of the documentary.  This style usually has a fatalistic view of life with characters living on the margins of society, either as unemployed members of the working class or as criminals.  Rules of the game is a part of this poetic realism style which showed how people were living their personal lives among both the rich and the servants in France. (56, Rene) This film can also be categorized under the description of 'innovative drama.' "Yet another kind of film rarely, if ever made in America, has also been attempted abroad- something I labelled in the first chapter the experimental or innovative history film." (50, Rosenstone)

            The scene showing Robert having an affair with Genevive and then attempting to quickly and abruptly cut the relationship off when they are out shooting on the hunting field.  Christine is unaware of the affair until she happened to look in her husband’s direction with a pair of binoculars on the outdoor shooting course.  The two women are portrayed as good and bad; Christine is the pure white countess and Genevive is the rifle woman.  “On the positive side were inspirational and pure white countesses, combinations of grand lady, mother, and nurse.  On the negative side were working- class rifle women who inspired the masses and who were often both violent and sexually lascivious.” (26, Bates)