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movies/rulesofthegame.html
The Rules of the Game (1939)
Jean Renoir
Now it doesn’t make me cry. And it doesn’t make my stomach turn. It
isn’t in color. And it barely has music. It doesn’t even make me want to
watch it again right away. There is, however, something I must tell you
about The Rules of the Game, and that is that it’s perfect.
The Rules of the Game possesses a level of frenetic energy and cine-stage
choreography, which is in a league by itself except perhaps Clouzot on a
good day. The play scene with the skeleton costume dancers—how Renoir
is able to cold start the momentum with the “play within play” and then
seamlessly transition from that eerie performance (black magic/religious
trance/alcohol, prob. rum) into a scene of multiple undressings (the way
she yanks off his belt in a whip-like motion as though it were a giant
snake, as well as the Citizen Kane-like perspective of the shot of the table
from across the room) and scurryings off by the revelers into the various
mouse holes (a repeat of the earlier scene where everyone darts and
dashes off to their rooms at evening’s close the night before). Only this
time it’s no dress rehearsal—someone is going to die—we can sense it.
Octave running around frantically trying to get anyone to help him out of
his bear costume—and how everyone is unwilling or too preoccupied to
lift a finger verges on Buñuelian tactics à la Exterminating Angel. Proving
once and for all that every great satire of the idle rich must have a brown
bear somewhere loose in the house.
The film even has goddamn physical comedy, from Renoir himself (as
Octave), climbing on the bed, throwing pillows around, and struggling to
get off his bear suit. (Did I mention the bear suit?) Sometimes I wonder
exactly how much all this physical comedy adds to the big concepts, but I
don’t see how it detracts either.
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