Douglas Laman is looking at all the movies on the Sight & Sound’s 50 Greatest Move lists that he has never seen before!

The best Wikipedia articles strike me as akin to reading an engrossing book, one that makes you want to keep on scrolling down and reading more about the subject at hand. To that end, reading the expansive Wikipedia page for Jean Renoir’s 1939 motion picture The Rules Of The Game fits those requirements like a glove, as it’s quite interesting to read about the background of the film and the political climate of Europe in the late 1930’s that greatly informed its story. Apparently, the movie generated a great deal of anger-driven controversy by depicting rich individuals with great amounts of influence in society as easily duped fools with selfish goals. Daring to mock the rich and powerful as self-absorbed just didn’t sit well, even if the entire first week of Donald Trump as President of the United States seems to suggest the film’s message about the upper-crust rings as true as ever.

Despite The Rules Of The Game receiving some strikingly bad reviews upon its initial release, it’s garnered a massively positive reception in the nearly 80 years it’s existed. And what, pray tell, may the story be here? Well, it’s a farcical-esque tale chronicling the exploits of a number of high-society folks as their romantic double-crosses pile up on another until they culminate into everything going to hell during a big party. Some of the primary players of the film include Christine (Nora Gregor), her husband, Robert (Macel Dalio), an aviator by the name of Andre (Roland Toutain) and the director himself, Jean Renoir, as Octave.

The Rules Of The Game is populated by characters who can’t seem to quite see two feet in front of their own faces, they’ve always got their minds fixated on their own needs first and any greater picture at stake is to be ignored unless it harms or benefits them directly. And while some of the intentionally simplistic caricatures (which are used as a way to lampoon specific archetypes of late 1930’s European high society) that make up the individuals in the plot do have a habit of blending together in some scenes, they’re mostly a fun bunch to watch bounce off each other. It’s helpful that all the actors do seem to be fully committed to the brand of dark lunacy Jean Renoir wants to bring the screen.

That specific style of humor the movie portrays leads to some of the best moments of The Rules Of The Game, including a shoe-shiners amusing attempt to play “She Loves Me” with some footwear he’s working on and Octave’s futile attempts to get out of a bear costume in the middle of a bustling party. The more explicit social commentary is kept mostly subtle, save for one monologue by Octave towards the end that makes the underlying themes of the piece come to the surface. Keeping it’s underlying extremely critical ideas about the upper-class more subdued is a strong move that lets the more over-the-top elements like the romantic deceit plenty of room to work properly.

All of that comical romance-fueled treachery culminates in a darker ending that seems to fit in with the darker prospects Renoir saw for the world as a whole in the then-future. Apparently, he was convinced another World War was around the corner, and thus, The Rules Of The Game ends in an appropriately somber fashion that seems to set the stage for the darker real life events Renoir was assured would unfold. That idea of translating the atmosphere of the world just before a large war/conflict breaks out is an honest to God fascinating concept and it’s interesting to read up on these kind of underlying themes (many of which I was previously ignorant on given my unfamiliarity with European history in this particular era) contained within the film after watching it.

It’s also nice to later learn that there was a greater purpose for the extended rabbit hunting sequence that occurs in the middle of the story. It serves as a critique of war in general, which actually makes total sense and lends some purpose to a sequence that still comes off as needlessly gratitious due to the disturbing to watch actual on-screen deaths of various rabbits. But, as one can plainly see, there’s a lot going on underneath the surface of the humorous The Rules Of The Game, and what was one seen as a controversial blight on French cinema can now be looked at in the year of 2017 as a fascinating exploration of one man taking swipes at the elite and impending wartime suffering he was tragically all too right about.