PART 2 of 2

zetes

But Renoir still sets the whole death scene up so clumsily that I had a strong desire to shut the tape off. I predicted it from the second Lisette lends Christine her coat. And then when Andre is sent there, well, since I didn't care a lick about him in the first place, I certainly didn't care that he was dead, so to hinge the climax around that death doesn't do a thing for me emotionally. Intellectually, it seems to me that the film just had to end, and to kill off Andre was the simplest way to end it.

END SPOILERS: Now, for the themes. Supposedly that is what convinces people to find this one so spectacular. It is mostly about the rules by which the rich have to abide, as well as the rules of the servants, and how these two classes interact. The themes are noble, but I don't think the film succeeds all too well in presenting them. Well, it doesn't do so poorly, but compared to The Grand Illusion, their presentation here is, well, weak-kneed. Rules of the Game deserves only to be perceived as a lesser but important work of a master filmmaker.

That's what particularly gets my goat, too: the fact that so many want to deify Rules of the Game, but, as I see it, they only want to do so to defame or, at the very least, depreciate The Grand Illusion. And it's nothing at all but pedantry. The Grand Illusion was immediately accepted as a masterpiece and was, if not the first, one of the first foreign films nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award, an association that is terribly xenophobic. Orson Welles once said that, if he could preserve one film for all time, it would be The Grand Illusion. Rules of the Game was despised upon its first release (which isn't very fair either; I ought to see if I can find some early reviews from France). Renoir re-edited the film, which is the version we have now, if I'm remembering correctly. It still went neglected for years, and was re-discovered after the war. I guess it was at this point that it began to gain favor. Francois Truffaut, in the Hitchcock interview book (page 267 if you have the most recent edition, near the start of the final chapter) puts it in the category of "great flawed films," which, he says, often reveal more about their maker than do the acknowledged masterpieces but are flawed somehow in the script or execution. I might be fine with the whole matter if the Rules of the Game fanatics recognized its flaws, but everyone seems to think it is one of the most perfect films ever created. I think it has ended up at #2 in Sight and Sound's poll of the best films ever, which they take every ten years, for at least the last two or three decades.

Cineastes pick Rules of the Game up like they would a stray cat. It begins its second life as a cult film, but then soon enough it is so exalted as to be thought of as one of the best films ever made by those who originally adopted it. Soon, though, as those types of people want to impress others with their knowledge, wanting least to proclaim a film that even lay people already know is a masterpiece a masterpiece (e.g., The Grand Illusion), they must call upon a lesser-seen film like Rules of the Game. They certainly don't want to be perceived as a lay person! Quickly, they convince even themselves that Rules of the Game is not only better than The Grand Illusion, but much, much better, or, for another example, that the studio-neutered The Magnificent Ambersons is better than Citizen Kane or, for yet another example, The Godfather II is better than the original, or that Kundun is better than Raging Bull or, another Scorsese example, The King of Comedy is better than Taxi Driver, these latter two opinions you may be hearing much more often in twenty or thirty years judging from some of the favorite alternative critics and some of the film buffs I've been speaking to over the last couple of years. Again, they don't want to be perceived as lay persons. The great irony of this is that Rules of the Game shows characters of lower class wanting desperately to be perceived as upper class.

So what happens when Rules of the Game is perceived as too well known? Then what will be the favorite Renoir film to all who claim to be hip? Nana? Toni? The Southerner or The River? How about La Bete Humane? Maybe I should try to find one of these films so that I can get a head start on being an ultra-cool cineaste!

score 7/10

zetes 23 October 2001

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0020447/