alr

The Rules of the Game
(La règle du jeu)

Screening on Film
Directed by Jean Renoir.
With Marcel Dalio, Nora Grégor, Jean Renoir.
France, 1939, 35mm, black & white, 113 min.
French with English subtitles.
Print source: Janus Films

In his stinging appraisal of the erotic charades of the French leisure class before World War II, Renoir satirizes the manners and mores of a society near collapse.  Alternating between farce and melodrama, realism and tragedy, the film centers on a lavish country-house party given by a marquis and his wife, where the complicated intrigues of the upper-class guests are mirrored by the activities of the servants.  Banned on its initial release as "too demoralizing,"The Rules of the Game has come to be regarded as one of the great masterworks of the cinema.

Part of film series

Read more

Masterworks of World Cinema

Other film series with this film

Read more

Renoir Reprise

Read more

Treasures from the Harvard Film Archive: N–R

Read more

Classics of World Cinema

Read more

Cinéma Français

Read more

The Complete Jean Renoir

Read more

A Tribute to Steve Livernash

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Psychedelic Cinema

Read more

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith

Read more
sepia photo of Artie Freedman in silhouette with a video camera at show

Boston Punk Rewound / Unbound. The Arthur Freedman Collection

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957 – 1988

Read more

From the Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection

Read more
a mausoleum that looks like a miniature Spanish cathedral, next to a variety of others, against an evening sky

The Night Watchman by Natalia Almada

Read more
a double-exposed image that includes a 16th century Russian man being fed grapes by another amid decadent decor

Wings of a Serf

Read more
a close-up of a Bissau-Guinean woman wearing a scarf on her head and looking directly at the camera with a slight smile

Le Dépays + Sans soleil

Read more
Peter Sellers wearing a large hat with "ME" embroidered on it, and gripping a Pilgrim-like collar

Carol for Another Christmas