In no way was it my intention to make a controversial film. It was not at all my intention to shock the bourgeoisie. I just wanted to make a movie, even a pleasant movie, but a pleasant movie that would at the same time function as a critique of a society I considered rotten to the core and which I still consider rotten to the core. Because society continues its rottenness, and is leading us toward some fine little catastrophes.
-- Jean Renoir

On its surface, La Règle du jeu is a farce about men and women having affairs, running from room to room hoping for a tryst or to catch someone else in an assignation. It is also an upstairs/downstairs film in which both the rich and the working classes are pursuing their own forms of double-dealing. Upstairs are Robert (Marcel Dalio), married to Christine (Nora Grégor) but having an affair with Genevieve (Mila Parély), while the aviator André Jurieux (Roland Toutain) and the gentlest soul, Octave (Jean Renoir), are in hot pursuit of Christine. Downstairs is the vixen Lisette (Paulette Dubost), who seems to like anyone in pants, including the new hire, Marceau (Julien Carette). Unfortunately, Lisette’s husband, Schumacher (Gaston Modot), is jealous, and he’s loose with a gun. Eventually, everyone gets involved in everyone else’s peccadilloes, until a case of mistaken identity causes -- well, I won’t tell you. La Règle du jeu can easily be enjoyed as a trifle of a farce, almost a cross between a Mozart opera buffa and a Marx Brothers film. But there’s much more going on.

La Règle du jeu is regularly lauded as one of the best films in the history of the cinema. In the Sight and Sound poll of directors, it is tied for ninth place. Many respectable directors -- Bernardo Bertolucci, Cameron Crowe, and Alan Rudolph, to name a few -- choose it for their top ten. On the other hand, many other people scratch their heads and ask why.

What baffles people is the anger that underlies all the fun. I take Renoir at his word in what he said above. These characters are largely rotten to the core, with weird tenets of honor, loyalty, and kindness, and bizarre concepts of what’s important. Their main goal in life seems to be able to do whatever childish thing comes to mind, and do it in such a way that they experience the thrill of getting caught without having to pay the consequences. From the point of view of Renoir, a left-leaning liberal who couldn’t believe that the French right wing wanted to appease Hitler, the world was going to hell in 1939. Where another director might have made a cynical film, Renoir makes a fine incision to the heart of the matter. His reaction to the world -- especially to those he felt were fiddling while Paris burned -- was to hoist them on their own petard.

When French audiences saw the film in 1939, they hooted and booed. It’s hard to imagine today that La Règle du jeu was capable of stirring such antagonism among the normally sanguine French. At least in Renoir’s opinion, a film about the foibles of both the upper and working classes should have allowed everyone to get a laugh at the other group’s expense. Instead, both sides took umbrage. One very pissed-off viewer took a newspaper and set fire to it with an eye toward burning down the house. Remember, 1939 was the 150th anniversary of the French Revolution -- even a century and a half later, Renoir’s view of a rotten aristocracy still held meaning for the working classes. But they didn’t like seeing themselves cast in the same light. And, of course, the upper classes have always believed in their own inherent superiority and that God is on their side -- they didn’t like Renoir’s portrayal of their foibles any more than the working classes did. Renoir’s (claimed) attempt to please everyone ended up making everyone livid. Perhaps the French sense of humor ossified when it was turned back on them.

Thirty days after it was released, La Règle du jeu was banned by the French government as being bad for the morale of the citizenry. A year later, Hitler owned France and his cultural ministers ordered the film burned. Somehow, the master was saved from the Nazis. Then, when the Allies bombed France, the master was destroyed. The film was unloved, unwanted, and fated for destruction. How did it end up so widely loved and lauded?

André Bazin had a lot to do with it. The renowned French film critic and founder of the journal Cahiers du cinéma was also a big fan of Renoir for the transparency of his directing. Renoir, very much like his famous father, painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, had the ability to create extremely complicated art while making it look as if no one had broken a sweat. For a master class in directing, watch chapters 18-27: Renoir intertwines several locations and stories without ever resorting to trick photography, while keeping the audience fully aware of the story’s complexly woven threads.

Not only did Bazin champion Renoir, he hired some youngsters to write for Cahiers du cinéma who shared his love for Renoir and who ultimately had an immense effect on film -- people such as François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Eric Rohmer. Renoir appreciated the recognition. Bazin died at the early age of 40. Almost ten years later, his book, What Is Cinema? -- still one of the best books ever written about film -- was released in the US. Renoir wrote in the introduction that Bazin was a man "who gave the patent of royalty to the cinema just as the poets of the past had crowned their kings."

Even with his antipathy toward his fellow man, Renoir never descended to cynicism. Cynics don’t care; Renoir cared deeply. The proof is in how his subtle yet devastating candy-coated attacks retain their potency after 65 years. His seemingly relaxed attitude might lead you to think he’s not really trying, but such apparent ease took thought and ingenuity. That the story works on so many levels is a testament to the quality of the writing.

I’ve used the film’s original French title throughout this review because the usual translation of La Règle du jeu -- The Rules of the Game -- has always bothered me. In his original title, Renoir’s Rule is singular, not plural, and I believe the distinction is important. Renoir was showing us a game -- one he felt was dangerously harebrained -- and spent the entire film exposing its one rule: don’t fall in love or there will be mortal consequences. If it sounds as if I attribute too much malevolence to Renoir’s motives, re-read the quote that heads this review.

In 1959, film lovers Jean Gaborit and Jacques Durand re-created the film that everyone had wanted to destroy by piecing together the best prints and bits of negative that they could find. Three years later, La Règle du jeu came in ranked third (behind Citizen Kane and L’avventura) in the once-per-decade Sight and Sound list of the ten best films of all time. It has appeared on that list every decade since.

The Criterion Collection again proves they are the gold standard in the presentation of classic films. For years, La Règle du jeu has looked faded and scruffy -- even Criterion’s $90 laserdisc was not up to their usual standard. But some intrepid soul, obsessed with doing it right, has found a first-generation copy. This will probably be the best version of this classic film you will ever see. Look at the gorgeous countryside in chapters 13 and 14 to see what a beautiful job Criterion has done.

They have also given us a wealth of significant extras: a 1965 film of Gaborit and Durand discussing their reconstruction and re-release of the film; selections from Jean Renoir le Patron: La Regle et l'Exception, a 1966 French television program; a portion of Jean Renoir, a BBC documentary by David Thomson; a charming introduction to the film by Renoir himself; and many other revealing tidbits. The only disappointment is Criterion’s retention of the commentary track from the laserdisc -- Peter Bogdanovich reading an essay by Renoir authority Alexander Sesonske. The essay is fine, but I would prefer to read it myself, then hear the comments of some of the directors who voted for La Règle du jeu in the Sight and Sound poll -- such as Bertolucci, Crowe, or Rudolph. Or perhaps David Denby of The New Yorker, who also picked it. Denby is a brilliant student of film and would have done a wonderful job.

That quibble aside, this is a masterful rendering of a wonderful film. Every detail, down to the artsy and luxurious packaging, shows careful attention paid and an almost reverent love of La Règle du jeu. This is how DVDs should be done.