ONCE UPON A TIME… THE RULES OF THE GAME

Protagonists:

• Olivier CURCHOD, specialist of The Rules of the Game
• Bertrand TAVERNIER, filmmaker
• Jacques RENOIR, Jean Renoir’s great nephew
• Leslie CARON, actress and friend of Jean Renoir
• Olivier ASSAYAS, filmmaker
• Claude GAUTEUR, Jean Renoir specialist

Portrait of a film: In this “dramatic fantasy”, Jean Renoir captures the provincial French aristocracy in a humorous and uncompromising way. This small world of chatelains and servants, masquerades and hunting parties, is steeped in lies, feigned happiness and deceitful love affairs, to the point of disguising a murder as an accident. No real bad guys or real good guys in this film that breaks the codes of narration and multiplies technical audacities. Although the film was loathed or misunderstood when it was released, it is today considered one of the masterpieces of world cinema.

Portrait of an era: Released on the eve of the Second World War and in the shadow of anti-Semitism, The Rules of the Game is a cruel depiction of a disappearing world, of the decline of a certain French elite, frivolous, and unaware of the rising perils. “What’s interesting,” says Renoir, “is the time I shot it, during the period between Munich and the war, I felt deeply disturbed by the state of mind of a part of the French society”. A state of mind that will lead to defeat, the German victory and the Vichy regime.

Portrait of a filmmaker: Jean Renoir (1894-1979), the son of the impressionist painter Auguste Renoir, is one of the iconic figures of French cinema, admired by the heralds of the New Wave. Influenced by the Popular Front, the unforgettable author of The Great Illusion and The Human Beast fulfils in The Rules of the Game one of his long-held dreams, which is to become an actor. As the film turns out to be a failure, Jean Renoir goes to pursue his filming career in Italy and then in the United States where he will take the American nationality.