La Règle du jeu

An analysis of Renoir’s La Règle Du Jeu, its characters, themes, and social commentary.

Renoir’s film begins with a brief statement and a line from Beaumarchais:

This entertainment, set on the eve of the second world war, does not claim to be a study of manners. Its characters are purely fictitious.

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“Sensitive hearts, faithful hearts, who shun love whither it does range, cease to be so bitter, is it a crime to change? If cupid was given wings, was it not to flitter?

-Beaumarchais, the Marriage of Figaro

While La Règle du jeu may have been influenced by Renoir’s impression of the European upper class leading up the second world war, the contents of the film from the first frame to the last are a fictional, dramatized exploration of human behavior. Renoir’s thoughts on his own work are available in the form of interview transcripts from later on in his life, and reflecting on the period in which La Règle du jeu was written and produced he admits, “Knowing that we were going to have a war, being absolutely convinced of it, my work was permeated with it. But I didn’t establish a relationship between the impending state of war and my characters’ dialogues or words.” (Breitrose & Rothman 1994, p.7). When considering the life of Renoir, the main target of his artistic wrath (if it permeated his work at all) was not the upper class in general, but rather the wealthy executives who controlled his industry of cinema (O’Shaugnessy, 2000, p.22) and, in some ways, poached on his land. The initial rejection of the film, by viewers of all classes, left Renoir stunned. “I had no intention of startling conventional people,” he states, “I simply wanted to make a film, I even wanted to make a good film, but one that, at the same time, would criticize a society that I considered to be rotten and that I continue to consider to be absolutely rotten, because this society is still the same. It’s still rotten, it hasn’t finished drawing us into some pretty little catastrophes.” (Breitrose & Rothman 1994, p.237). Renoir clearly remembers the disastrous premiere at the Colisée, and was stunned when a viewer became so upset by the tone of the film that they, igniting a rolled newspaper with matchbook, attempted to set the room on fire (Breitrose & Rothman 1994, p.237). Renoir himself left the screening not in stitches, but in tears (Bergan 1992, p.205), the art of La Règle du jeu totally overlooked.

Surely, if the film were released in a different time and place, the reception may have fallen in line with the opinion of the modern audience that considers it a classic, if not the definitive, French film. D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance might have been received by Ingmar Bergman fans with roaring applause due to the same pensive, ethereal imagery which overwhelmed its actual audience in 1916, when it opened to failure (Gazetas, 2008, pg.31). If a study of film history on a global scale reveals anything certain, it is that the cinema developed as an international conversation, in which filmmakers discovered what was effective and separated it from what was not, evolving the art in a process akin to natural selection. The reality of that process (which still exists today) is that films can leap away from what the contemporary audience is focused on, or is even able to follow. As a result, context determines where a film will fall in this larger dialogue of filmmaking in the world, but it does not determine the value of the film itself. By this logic, one can determine that a discussion of La Règle du jeu as a freestanding work of art might be hindered by any further speculation on the context of its 1939 release beyond the bullet points of history: the film’s initial reception as a failure no doubt plays a part in its legacy as an unappreciated masterpiece, a reputation which most modern viewers are aware of prior to their first screening of it. Today, viewers have a chance to “get” what past viewers did not, and playing a role in this avant-garde narrative in art history is one of the many ways people can convince themselves they are a part of something special. Without a doubt, some who hold the film in high regard do so simply because this widespread cultural narrative suggests it is desirable and fashionable to, just as it is desirable and fashionable to be a guest at La Colinière.

The real genius of La Règle du jeu has nothing to do with its political context and initial reception, but everything to do with its characters. Beneath their comedic appeal they provide a thought provoking exploration of human values, and manage to do so even when the film is separated by decades from the particular class it may have been conceived to criticize.

In 1969, Renoir received a letter containing this passage:

I have never been able- or have never known how- to tell you how much La Règle du jeu (which I saw over and over again between the ages of thirteen and fourteen, when everything in my life was going so badly) helped me keep going, to understand the motives of the people around me, and to get me through those awful years of my adolescence… I will always feel that my life is connected to the film you made. (Thompson & Lobianco, 1994, p.59)

The author of this letter was Francois Truffaut. His comments are not only indicative of how influential Renoir came to be for France’s Nouvelle Vague, but also illustrate how transcendent Renoir’s characters in La Règle du jeu can be; their rules and values (or lack thereof) describing a widely observed part of human behavior not tethered solely to the people who may have directly inspired Renoir.

Tone is important in the film, consisting of a blend of romantic melodrama, satire, farce and black comedy. This tone allows Renoir to construct the characters as he does, pushing them to an extreme. By rewiring his characters’ inner monologues to connect directly to their powers of speech, Renoir allows for more exposition to occur. They often speak as if performing in an advertisement for their lifestyle; a servant proclaims “constraint spoils pleasure” to the rest of the group around the dinner table. By allowing the characters to be less inhibited, he is able to expose them and push their motivation into the spotlight, learning about individuals through their interactions. Winding them up like one of La Chesnaye’s toys, he lets them loose upon each other. From a practical perspective, this level of exaggeration allows for a feature film because the characters are, quite simply, fun to watch. Renoir reflects, “I hope that the portrayal of this society leads us to love it, delinquent though it may be, because this society has at least one advantage: it wears no masks.” (Breitrose & Rothman 1994, p.237). Renoir’s film frames its characters for its viewers like the radio announcer dramatizing André’s landing does for her listeners, embellishing the truth to try and make the experience more vivid, getting us closer to how Renoir himself truly feels about the type of people this film draws inspiration from. The main characters each present an important side to Renoir’s film, as do the situations they find themselves in, and discussing them each individually is the most efficient way to form an understanding of Renoir’s work.

The character of André Jurieux is arguably the most important to Renoir’s vision. Much of the plot is based around his desire for Christine and his infiltration of this society to acquire her. “There is another aspect to this question [of class] that preoccupies me: It’s the attempt to enter another class. For example, the arrival into the world of La Règle du jeu of a boy like Jurieux, the aviator, who is not at all a part of this world. The fact that he is honest and pure makes him even more dangerous. The truth is that by killing him, they eliminate a microbe. A very nice microbe, but a microbe that could have killed the entire organism” (Breitrose & Rothman 1994, p.136). André’s pursuit of Christine is strengthened by it’s underlying theme of the upward plight of the middle class. Renoir also designs André as a misfit to their world, an outspoken outsider, in order to have him represent nature and the uncontrolled. This provides stark contrast to the elite’s rehearsed, almost theatrical way of life.

When André and Octave stand on a hillside, after surviving André’s suicide attempt in the wake of Christine’s absence at the airfield, Octave berates André’s public display of emotion, and insists that Christine simply can’t see him, and tells André he should understand there are rules for a society woman such as her. Octave implies that if André desires Christine, he must pursue her within this system of rules (which later we discover Octave has been doing all along). The core humor of this film lies in this very hypocrisy, a collection of characters acting selfishly in the pursuit of superficial pleasure and sexual conquest, with no indication of true friendship, yet in the middle of such a display, they insist there are rules in how to proceed. By the time we witness André’s murder, if not long before, we’ve discovered this hypocrisy. While one might expect the film to reveal such rules, Renoir’s characters instead explore the world of the film in all directions and reveal that no consistent set of rules exist. Nothing is really found to be sacred, much less protected by a set of rules. If anything, André’s journey in La Règle du jeu brings him into contact with characters that exemplify the ability rationalize your actions and falsify your emotions to your peers, and if one declares questionable actions to somehow be gentlemanly or ladylike, they indeed can be.

At the beginning of the film we are presented with Christine as an idea of a prize, meant for whatever suitor is worthy. We first hear of her existence as a woman who must be so desirable, she would drive a man to fly across the ocean. When the viewer is first introduced to her, the camera is fixed to the same position in the room as her radio, broadcasting the events on the airfield where André is throwing a tantrum regarding her absence. The viewer meets Christine not as a close up, but as only one of many elements in her own first frame, along with her servant Lisette, expensive décor, furniture and attire. With all these pieces intentionally arranged as they are, Renoir suggests André may be infatuated with Christine’s status, and his pursuit of her is the pursuit of a position in a higher class than his own.

Christine’s character helps define what love means in the context of the film. Around Christine, the film gradually assembles what becomes a ménage à quatre: a familiar arrangement of characters in which a woman is romantically pursued by three contrasting suitors (Bergan 1992, p. 80). Such an arrangement serves as an excuse to keep three very different characters close to each other as the director compares them during in their pursuit of the same goal. Christine seems to care little for the admitted affairs of her husband, catching a glimpse of her husband in an embrace with Geneviève (an embrace ironically meant by the Marquis to be a farewell, due to a sudden desire to be worthy of Christine). As she confronts her husband’s lover, when one would expect a confession between Christine and Geneviève in which they might come together and support one another over the selfish ways of the Marquis, Renoir quickly turns the dialog into a shared criticism of how unattractive they find the Marquis to be when he smokes in bed. Renoir proves the absence of true feelings by showing what little effect the characters (some bound together by marriage) have on one another emotionally. Genevieve herself, the mistress of Robert La Chesnaye who predates his marriage, has an important moment in shaping the tone of the film as she smokes beside the card game and recites a maxim from Chamfort: “love, as it exists in society, is merely the mingling of two whims, and the contact of two skins.”

With Christine’s change of heart from André to Octave, she demonstrates that love, like the rules of the game, seems conveniently controllable. Christine might be the closest Renoir comes to realism in the film, as in her romantic indecision we notice her desire to escape this meaningless world she is in, less concerned with what lover she takes as the rescuer.

The ideas of free spirit and nature are present in Renoir’s film. The poacher Marceu personifies these two, and his recruitment to La Colinière is done in front of a the disapproving gamekeeper Schumacer, who represents order and authority (Bergan 1992, p. 28). Schumacher’s name’s association with shoe maker is pointed out early on in a joke between the Marquis and Christine, and later we see Marceau, while in pursuit of Schumacher’s wife Lisette, polishing a row of boots, reciting the familiar phrase “she loves me, she loves me not, she loves me…” While the servants eat around the table in the cellar, Marceau becomes infatuated with Schumacher’s wife, and begins to court her, his role as a poacher intact. It is worth noting that only the servants eat in the film, while the masters are too distracted by the theatrics of their egocentricity (Braudy, 1971. P. 111).

The possessive jealousy of Schumacher, and his attempts to control his surroundings, lead to his attempt to assassinate Marceau. The film is filled with subtle suggestions that it’s characters, whether principal or supporting, are are all guilty of the same behavior. As Schumacher chases Marceau throughout crowd with his gun drawn, we see every guest throw their hands up in surrender, Renoir’s clever hint that everyone at La Colinière is guilty of something. Somewhere in the madness of the musical numbers, Marceau and the Marquis find each other in the hallway and have a brief but illuminating exchange about the nature of acquiring and maintaining women. With this, Renoir points out that in the world of these characters, and between two men, differences of class and status may be suspended for conversations that objectify the opposite sex.

Marceau is first offered his job at La Colinière not out of charity, but simply because La Chesnaye could. It is done out of the Marquis’ ennui, and as an effortless demonstration of power over his subject Schumacher who holds very different desires for Marceau’s fate. With this seemingly generous deed by La Chesnaye, Renoir subtly addresses the difficult theme of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, as the consequences of Marceau’s employment (the eventual death of André, one may argue) are a direct result of La Chesnaye’s tendency to make decisions simply because he can, while any ability on his part to do the right thing for the right reasons is absent from the film. One exception may be found in the termination of his affair with Geneviève in order to feel deserving of his wife Christine, as he sacrifices pleasure in an attempt to maintain a sense of order and do right by the laws of marriage, a gesture which in some way could be thought of as heroic (Braudy, 1971. P. 176).

When André and La Chesnaye exchange physical blows over Christine, La Chesnaye suggests they are behaving like the lower class, since he has read reports of similar violent disputes in poor neighborhoods (Davis, 2009, p. 102). Renoir is suggesting, again, that lower class people are not more barbaric in nature, but the wealthy elite, with their rules of the game, invest in concealing such barbarism with walls of false etiquette, walls which André was able to temporarily bring down in his brief time at La Colinière before he was killed in the process.

While the source of his wealth is discussed vaguely, Renoir highlights the Marquis La Chesnaye as the one person who is worth so much that his character is ironically defined less by money than anyone else in the film. He is instead most defined by a strange obsession with musical, mechanical antiques. Such objects were tremendously popular in the 18th century (O’Shaugnessy, 2000, p.149); a time when the class of society to which La Chesnaye belongs was arguably at its peak. The gigantic calliope, proudly unveiled to the guests of La Colinière, references a time when his elite society functioned like a well oiled machine (Braudy, 1971. P. 90), an idea now only accessible to him through a nostalgic connection to these objects.

At the close of the film, the La Chesnaye offers an interpretation of the circumstances of André’s death, which to most is clearly false, but which the guests elect to believe as true (Davis, 2009, p. 30). By referring to Schumacher as his gamekeeper, after dismissing only him a few scenes earlier, the marquis demonstrates an effortless adjustment to reality, and total control over his subjects in order to present the most believable lie possible. An interesting detail behind the speech is that La Chesnaye’s lie parallels the truth: Schumacher’s job is to shoot poachers, and André indeed sought to poach La Chesnaye’s own wife (Davis, 2009, p. 96). The operatic style with which la Chesnaye delivers this lie from the top of the terrace stairs suggests the victory of theatricality (the dishonest ways of the elite) over nature and truth (the ways of André) (O’Shaugnessy, 2000, p.148).

When considering Octave as a character, one must also consider Renoir’s role as a director in parallel. Octave’s attempts to please others and avoid any conflict have put him in a position he is unable to change, but seeks to: a common predicament for all filmmakers. The bear costume he dons for the staged sequences symbolizes this prison he has found himself in (Braudy, 1971. P. 90). In one of the most humorous bits in the film, Renoir, in his bear suit as Octave, wanders between his characters at La Colinière, searching for one that may help him free of the restraints of this outfit and role.

The majority of the film sees Octave as a matchmaker, seemingly loyal friend, organizer, messenger. At the beginning he lies harmlessly with Christine in bed, convincing her to invite André to the weekend getaway at La Colinière. Octave’s character, like the director who plays him, is aware of the secretive affairs of his characters, and he exploits them to further the plot. It is subtle, disguised with sample polite manners with which it is received, but Octave’s brief mention of his knowledge of La Chenaye’s affair with Genevieve is his way of blackmailing La Chesnaye himself see that André is invited to La Colinière. With this, Octave showcases an important part of the structure of Renoir’s hated elite: knowledge of the private lives of others is a form of currency that enables advancement.

Octave has a very important exchange with Christine later on in the film, in which he justifies dishonesty, pointing out the omnipresence of lies and liars in the world, declaring that “everyone has his reasons”. It is very interesting that the character played by the director himself cites cinema as an example when naming institutions guilty of telling such lies (Davis, 2009, p. 108). If we have been told by the same character (who wields authority being the director as well) that there are strict rules and also that the whole world lies, then we are left with a world with no moral orientation. This is the heart of Renoir’s exposé of the class of people he abhors. It is not a matter of there being no rules to account for, but that there are countless individuals, selfish in motivation, each perpetually reinventing what the rules are.

Initially, we place Octave at the moral center of the film, bringing balance and arranging events to gratify everyone. It is revealed later on in the film that Octave has been playing his hand for the heart of Christine, and his honorable diplomacy is actually self-serving calculation. While the death of André might be the culmination of the events in the film, and suggests the price of the character’s behavior, it is with Octave and Christine conspiring to run away together that the film’s weighing of it’s characters’ values reaches its lowest point; If Octave is in it for himself, then surely, everyone is. Octave, a failed musician, stands alone atop the terrace stairs and mimics the gestures of a musical conductor to an orchestra and audience of no one. In striking contrast, the closing scene puts La Chesnaye in the same position at the same angle, as he delivers a dishonest report of night’s tragic events to all the guests of La Colinière, playing everyone masterfully.

The Characters are provided with several situations and settings in which they come in contact with each other to expose their motivations and further the plot. The Architecture of La Colinière itself provides a background for the characters. The analogy of a board game is widely discussed by the film’s admirers and inspectors, and the link between the checkered tile of the floors of La Colinière and the pattern of a chessboard is no coincidence (Davis, 2009, p. 101). The chess motif runs even deeper, highlighting the differences in the implied rules for each character, as different chess pieces have different possible moves based on their class, yet they all seek to accomplish the same thing, doing so with varying degrees of ease because of their status.

One of the most important situations in which the characters converge is the hunt, depicted in both a single scene and as lingering theme throughout the film. The guests of La Colinière venture to the grounds where they are helped by servants to shoot rabbits and birds, and important interactions between characters become embedded in the action presented to the viewer. The idea of aiming for something and acquiring is how the hunting motif pervades the romantic pursuits of all the characters in the film. Retrieved kills in hunting are often brandished as trophies that declare status, and the rules of the game of love, for these characters, suggests the successful acquisition of a new lover is no different. Both of these activities seem to be done less out of an innate desire, and more out of a reflex to exercise what one is entitled to do, a perfect example displayed by Christine’s professing her boredom with hunting while she continues to expend the rest of her ammo along with the others. The taking of life out of boredom is one of the ways Renoir shows us ignorance and a lack of priority. La Chesnaye and Geneviève then have a farewell of sorts, while their embrace is observed through binoculars by Christine. Symbolism aside, Renoir’s characters are a circus of absurdity and coincidence, far from a depressing statement of their counterparts in reality.

While editing may present La Règle du jeu as a film that seems composed of pure intent, Renoir admits that half of the film is improvised. This improvisation is not aimless, however as Renoir claims it was controlled and kept consistent by vision (Breitrose & Rothman 1994, p.202). Renoir’s vision is carried by the characters, so strong in their roles that they stay true to their purposes through many bizarre situations their director creates around them, the most iconic of which may well be the Danse Macabre.

A striking representation of death and impending doom, the dancers of the Macabre sequence float through the audience with umbrella wire frames stripped of material, Renoir poking fun at this society’s lack of preparedness to shelter themselves from what is to come. In Bergan’s opinion, the Danse Macabre sequence may be Renoir’s suggestion that this society is a group of individuals “who might have had an influence shaping the world, [yet] did nothing to prevent the advance of Fascism; some of whom, indeed, actually welcomed it.” (1992, p. 80).

Renoir’s film survived its initial failure and found footing as a classic because it demonstrates an understanding that there will always be a part of society and humanity that is removed from experiencing life with reason and accountability. If wealth were not a defining part of the film’s characters, an equally revealing exposition of human values could have been a film exploring excessive poverty, where the protagonists scramble to feed and shelter themselves, behaving just as disrespectfully of real emotions and relationships, and just as ignorant of impending war as the occupants of La Colinière. The reason wealth is essential to the film’s characters is because of the inherent power it gives them. Because of their resources and status, the wealthy are capable, responsible and influential, yet a society of the wealthy exists that encourages behavior driven by selfishness, with flexible rules synthesized whenever convenient. If Renoir’s sights were focused solely on prewar Europe’s wealthiest, the sudden arrival of a fascist brigade (or the sudden dropping of a bomb on La Colinière just as Christine declares who she loves) might have been more effective in proving his point, but then his borderless exploration of human values would have been abandoned for political speculation, rendering the film nothing more than an amusing relic.

A viewer might expect that André’s death, if anything, would cause the characters to come to their senses and feel some responsibility for the tragedy, as the sudden appearance of an adult does for the murderous children at the end of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Instead we see that the rules of their game, as described and depicted by them throughout the film, both instruct and allow for them to cover up any source of potential embarrassment. With the elite surviving the film unscathed, and even patting themselves on the back, Renoir illustrates why the upper class, for him, is so problematic: their behavior is difficult to challenge because it does not simply evade judgment and truth, it owns and defines them and in the process of doing so consumes whatever challenges its ways, as it consumed André Jurieux. One of the greatest examples of this comes in the final moments of the film, when the General scoffs at suspicion that La Chesnaye’s report of André’s death by manslaughter might be false. For the General, the host La Chesnaye is telling the truth, as La Chesnaye’s status allows him to decide it. The General then confesses his admiration for La Chesnaye, calling him a model citizen, a man with class,

“and that’s become rare”

• Thompson, David & LoBianco, Lorraine (Eds.) 1994. Jean Renoir: Letters. London, UK. Faber and Faber Limited.
• Bergan, Ronald. 1992. Jean Renoir: Projections of Paradise. Woodstock, NY. Overlook Press.
• Breitrose, Henry & Rothman, William (Eds.) 1989. Renoir on Renoir: Interviews, Essays & Remarks. NY, NY. Cambridge University Press.
• O’Shaugnessy, Martin. French Film Directors: Renoir. 2000. NY, NY. St. Martin’s Press, Inc
• Davis, Colin. 2012. Postwar Renoir: Film and the Memory of Violence. NY, NY. Routledge.
• Gazetas, Aristides. 2008. An Introduction to World Cinema. Jefferson, NC. McFarland & Company Inc.
• Davis, Colin. 2009. Scenes of Love and Murder: Renoir, Film and Philosophy. NY, NY. Wallflower Press.
• Braudy, Leo. 1971. Jean Renoir: The World of his Films. NY, NY. Columbia University Press.
• Bertin, Celia. 1991. Jean Renoir: A Life in Pictures. Baltimore, MD. The Johns Hopkins University Press.