The Rules Of The Game

It was the tenth Shelter-In-Place movie night (which means we’ve been doing this nonsense for TWENTY WEEKS) and with nobody stepping up to present, I dug into good old http://www.kanopy.com and nominated Jean Renoir’s 1939 masterpiece The Rules Of The Game.  I picked it largely because it’s among the most highly-regarded films that I had never gotten around to see.

And…within the first three minutes of the film…I realized I had seen it.  Which, to be fair, doesn’t exactly inspire a vote of confidence in the film.  But in the end, it really is a pretty good movie, if a bit lacking in memorability.

This would totally be Phantom if she were named Christine.  Oh wait, she is.

The film, which is set in contemporary times (which is to say immediate pre-war WWII France) opens with the landing of an aviator who has just pulled off some sort of Lindberghesque feat, crossing the Atlantic in some unique fashion or another.  Sadly, he was spurred on the take this risk by the love of a married woman – a married woman who declined to show up at his triumphal landing in France.  And as we all know, hell hath no fury like an aviator scorned.  He whines to a radio reporter, it’s kind of scandalous.

And-uh I would fly 500 miles and-uh I would fly 500 more

So that’s the initial setup.  But the whole thing starts out more or less as a complicated Shakepearean comedy.  The Aviator is in love with the Lady.  The Lady is married to a well-to-do Husband.  The Husband is having an affair with a Mistress.  The Lady has a Coquettish Handmaiden.  The Coquettish Handmaiden is married to the Husband’s Lady Chatterly’s Loveresque Gamewarden, who is posted not in Paris but at the Estate in the country.  But the Coquettish Handmaiden doesn’t really mind, because she doesn’t love the Gamewarden all that much and enjoys getting her rocks off with any and all, including the Clown Octave – the man who plays the Everyman role as the dedicated friend of the Aviator who is also in love with the Lady.  Incidentally, the Clown Octave, the best character in the film by a good margin, happens to be played by none other than…the director, Jean Renoir.

This stand of aspens – it’s all one giant organism!

So.  With all of these interconnecting folks, and some of these relationships known, some obscure, the Husband plans a Hunt out at his Country Estate.  Invited is…well, all of the above, and of course more.  When the Husband arrives early at the Estate to get the Hunt set up, he learns from his Gamewarden that there’s a Rabbit Poacher on the grounds.  They intercept the Poacher, but instead of…well…doing whatever one would normally do to a Poacher in 1939 France, the Husband takes a liking to the Poacher and invites him to join his cadre of domestics at the Estate.

Have you seen Moose?

Side note:  During the Hunt…let’s just say that “No Animals Were Harmed During The Making Of This Film” was certainly not included in the credits of the movie.  In 2019, I’d believe that a film studio could CGI animals being pulverized by a shotgun, but in 1939?  Yeah, it was real.

Sorry I’m not home right now, I’m walking into rabbit traps, but leave a message and I’ll call you back

Anyhow, things come to a head in out at the Estate.  The Lady witnesses the Husband together with the Mistress.  The Husband, for his part, is jealous of the Aviator.  The Clown Octave, trying to get the Aviator hooked up with the Lady despite being in love with the Lady himself, is stuck in the middle of it all.

That’s Rosencrantz there in the background…that’s Guildenstern there in the background…whatever.  This movie can’t be over until everybody who is marked for death dies.

And, God help us, the Coquettish Handmaiden decides to fall straight in love with the Poacher.  The upper-class cuckolds do their best to handle their situations with aplomb, but the Gamewarden?  He’s straight up unable to control his rage.  Shots are fired.  People are chased around the Estate.  The Gamewarden is summarily dismissed by the Husband – as is the newly-hired Poacher.  And that should be the end of that.

Renoir plays Octave, but he plays Cassandra quite as well

But, Shakespeare is not so kind as all that.  As it happens, the Lady wearing the Coquettish Handmaiden’s cape, and the Clown Octave meet in a greenhouse, intending to run away together.  Overseen by the Gamewarden and the Poacher in a strange truce, they believe that the Clown Octave is now running off with the object of both of their affections.  So, when the Clown Octave in an act of selflessness sends the Aviator to claim the Lady, the Gamewarden and the Poacher mistake him for the Clown Octave (ut’s not) pilfering the Coquettish Handmaiden (it’s also not), and shoot him dead.  Hamlet it ain’t, because there’s only one body.  The End.

I don’t know how much there is to say about this film.  It’s an absolute satire of the decline of morality in “The Germans Prefer To March In The Shade” France.  And the public, interestingly enough, apparently HATED it.  You don’t take flak unless you’re over the target, they say.  Renoir with his masterpiece brutally skewers the lax moral standards of the French as (before – he couldn’t have known for sure) Europe is thrust into a war for its life.  It wasn’t for France to win that war.  Jean Renoir, for one, understood why not.  And that’s the take-away lesson of The Rules Of The Game.