French Cinema: Rules of the Game

The Rules of the Game

The Rules of the Game by Jean Renoir (1939)

It is the end of the nineteen-thirties . An airplane lands at the Le Bourget airport amid wild applause from the crowd. The aviator André Jurieu has just beaten the record for a transatlantic flight. Interviewed immediately on the radio, he bitterly reproaches Christine, the woman he loves, for not bothering to come to the airport to greet his arrival. It was for her, he explains, that he had accomplished this feat. Christine is listening to the broadcast in her Parisian residence, as is her husband the marquis Robert de La Chesnaye. Christine gives her husband to understand that Jurieu has misunderstood their relationship, which according to her is only a friendship. Swept away by a surge of love for his wife, Robert decides to break it off with his long-time mistress Geneviève the very next day.

In a state of despair after his scandalous indiscretion on the radio, Jurieu attempts to commit suicide in his car in the company of Octave, his best friend. None too appreciative, Octave criticizes him severely for his lack of respect for the rules of the elevated society to which Christine belongs. Yielding nonetheless to Jurieu’s beseeching, Octave agrees to help him see Christine again. Octave has known Christine since her childhood, having been close to her father, who was a famous orchestra leader in Vienna. He manages to convince Christine and Robert to invite Jurieu to join them for a hunting party at their country residence La Colinière in Sologne, where he will be entertaining other guests, aristocrats and wealthy bourgeois acquaintances.

As soon as he arrives at the castle Robert has to resolve a conflict between his Alsatian game warden Schumacher and a local character, Marceau, who is poaching on his land. Amused by Marceau, the marquis solves the problem by offering to employ him as a servant in the castle. When Octave and Jurieu arrive, the aviator is given a hero’s welcome by the other guests. Christine takes advantage of the occasion to publicly declare the innocence of her relations with André — which earns her plaudits from the guests but convinces no one. Her husband is nevertheless relieved and proposes, following the hunt, a big party in Jurieu’s honor in which all the guests will wear costumes and put on skits. One story below, Marceau joins the other servants at the dinner table and begins to flirt with Lisette (Christine’s servant and Schumacher’s wife).

The film picks up the next day with the hunt. Beaters flush out pheasants and rabbits, which are then shot by hunters hiding behind blinds. After the hunt when Robert informs Geneviève of his decision to terminate their romance, his mistress entreats him to embrace her one last time. Their parting kiss is spotted by Christine, who chances to see them through a spyglass and misinterprets their embrace. She is shocked to discover this affair, which had been an open secret for years among their friends.

The evening of the party Christine decides to take revenge by flirting with one of her admirers Saint-Aubin, who is only too happy to oblige her. During a skit in a darkened room, based on Saint-Saëns’s La Danse macabre, Jurieu jealously keeps an eye on Christine and Saint-Aubin while Schumacher tries to put a leash on his wife Lisette, who is flirting with Marceau. Eventually Jurieu confronts and fights with Saint-Aubin, before he is himself confronted by the marquis. While Jurieu and the marquis fight, Schumacher pursues Marceau — whom he has caught in the kitchen with Lisette — taking wild shots at him with his revolver. When Schumacher is finally brought under control, he is fired by the marquis along with Marceau. The marquis has made up with Jurieu. Having regained his aristocratic composure, he accepts the idea that his wife is going to leave with the aviator.

Meanwhile Christine has stepped outside with Octave, who confesses that he too is in love with her. She asks him to run away with her immediately. Schumacher and Marceau watch the scene in the darkness, mistaking the marquise for the warden’s wife, since Christine is wearing her servant’s cloak. The two men decide to take revenge by killing Octave, who has returned to the castle to get his coat. When Lisette persuades Octave that he isn’t the man for Christine, he gives his coat to André and sends him to Christine in his place. Schumacher mistakes André for Octave and shoots him dead with his rifle. Marceau relates the tragic event to the people in the castle, then departs along with Octave. Robert makes a speech to the assembled guests describing the incident as “a deplorable accident,” his warden having simply mistaken Jurieu for a poacher. The case is closed, and everyone retires to the castle.

	• Excerpt 1 :	The Beginning—role of the radio; public and private space (3’42”).
	• Excerpt 2 :	In Robert’s Quarters—the radio and the mechanical dolls; lies (1’36”).
	• Excerpt 3 :	André Jurieu’s arrival at the castle (50”).
	• Excerpt 4 :	The Servants’Meal—sequence shot (2’55”).
	• Excerpt 5 :	The Hunt—fast editing; massacre (1’49”).
	• Excerpt 6 :	The Spyglass Scene (2’50”).
	• Excerpt 7 :	The Party—the audience and the stage; death; sequence shot (4’29”).
	• Excerpt 8 :	The Mechanical Organ Scene (49”).
	• Excerpt 9 :	Schumacher tries to shoot Marceau; play and reality (2’03”).
	• Excerpt 10 :	Jurieu’s death; mistaken identities (2’11”).