The Rules of the Game

A weekend at a country house. A group from the upper class and their servants; the same betrayals and jealousies on both floors, and a death at the end. The question is whether the rules apply to everyone or only to those who get caught. Jean Renoir directed and appears in it himself as Octave. Its release was a catastrophe. At the screening on 7 July 1939 members of right-wing organisations in the audience booed. It was accused of being unpatriotic, frivolous and incomprehensible. In October 1939 the French authorities banned it for having an undesirable influence over the young. After the collapse Renoir cut it from 113 minutes to 85, and most of what he removed were his own scenes as Octave. For years that was the only version in circulation. The original negative was destroyed in the Allied bombing of Boulogne-sur-Seine in 1942. In 1956 restorers found 224 boxes of material at the site of the bombed laboratory and assembled a 106-minute version, which premiered at the 1959 Venice Film Festival and was proclaimed a masterpiece. The reputation reversed. It entered Sight and Sound's first greatest films list at number 10 in 1952, rose to number 2 in 1972 and stayed in the top ten in every poll through 2012, the only film to hold that place for seven decades. Who it is for: viewers interested in film history and comedies about social hypocrisy. Who it is not for: anyone who wants to tell the characters apart immediately. The first half hour is deliberately crowded and who is who settles late.