Die Spielregel (1939)
10KDie Spielregel: Directed by Jean Renoir. With Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost, Mila Parély, Odette Talazac. A bourgeois life in France at the onset of World War II, as the rich and their poor servants meet up at a French chateau.
“Renoir made a tight little romantic, or rather anti-romantic, comedy. And an angst-ridden, oversensitive, pre-WW2 French Bourgeosie, afraid of its own shadow, saw their worst character flaws fully illuminated exaggerated and satirized. Renoir, being an extremely smart man with keen observational skills and an open mind, simple condensed what he saw into a brilliant, multilinear film and poked fun at himself and each of the ludicrous but oh so human characters he invented. Misinterpreting the film as an attack on upper middle class culture of mid-20th century France, the film was very severely criticized, banned, and, inevitably, recognized as a masterpiece. How French.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eRenoiru0026#39;s remarkably light character study of the pre-World War II French upper class entertainingly and humorously lampoons Western ideas of liberty, gentility, idleness and – the big game itself – love. Love, in this film doesnu0026#39;t REALLY have any fixed rules and is shown to consist of everything from a hormonal imbalance to self-loathing and apathetic contempt to an emotion of such power and purity that it could legitimately require the ultimate sacrifice. The concept of liberty, which is sort of an understated backdrop in this film, could be poignantly mistaken for decadence and self-indulgence. And as one might predict, only the least decadent characters (the servants) appear to have goals and some semblance of self-concepts.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eRenoiru0026#39;s masterfully written and directed piece was filmed and is set in a time where the vestiges of pre-capitalist u0026quot;high cultureu0026quot; still had a strong influence on social mobility in France, so 21st century globalists in particular may find the stark and very overtly illusory distinctions between his lordship, his Austrian noblewoman wife and his servants to be quaint but perhaps a little alien. Set against the medium of decadence and directionlessness manifested in spurious and meaningless love/lust/sex/desire the film presents us with a cabaret of likable yet mostly despicable and extremely well-acted archetypes.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eLa Règle du Jeu presents a tangled web of relationships of every kind set against a social gathering at a country manor presided over by Marcel Daliou0026#39;s sympathetic (and pathetic) but rather hollow lordship and his exotic lady, an Austrian noble played by Nora Gregor. Renoir himself plays the older Octave, who appears to be the only person at the party who has set himself out of the u0026quot;the gameu0026quot; – friend to all lover of none. But even this laudable status inevitably breaks down in the tumult of rampaging aimlessness concentrated by the big party. The serving staff, though perhaps more honest and direct about themselves, are an obliquely angled mirror of the bourgeouis house guests in virtually every way. A few cross-class relationships will stick with you and are worth paying special attention to – the extremely condescending ones between the lord and his new domestic (memorably played by Julien Carette) and the lady and her chambermaid (Paulette Dubost) come to mind. In both cases, the servants have the upper hand in nearly every way, but they earn that position by subtly disguising their own wills as sound decision making by their u0026quot;superiorsu0026quot;.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eLa Règle du Jeu is a beautiful film. The audience is bombarded with continuous action, a very attractive and memorable cast that is in constant motion, gorgeous settings, and extremely well-choreographed and often very long continuous shots in which three or four plots are introduced, climax and close in the space of a few minutes. It deserves its reputation as a great film.”
