Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7762 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-06-02
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Full Screen, PAL
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 110 minutes

Special Features
French
Region 2
Directors Biography
Documentary On The Making Of The Film
English

Synopsis
Widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, Jean Renoir's masterpiece THE RULES OF THE GAME is a devastating satire of the pre-WWII French aristocracy. Starring Marcel Dalio as wealthy landowner Marquis Robert de la Chesnaye, it charts the shifting relationships among the guests at a weekend hunting party on his vast estate. The guest list includes Robert's mistress Genevieve (Mila Parely), from whom he's trying to part, and Andre Jurieu (Roland Toutain), a famed aviator who is in love with Robert's wife, Christine (Nora Gregor). As they begin a dizzy dance of escape and pursuit, their games are observed and echoed by the servants below the stairs. The gamekeeper Schumacher (Gaston Modot) is trying to keep the poacher, Marceau (Julien Carette), from poaching on his pretty wife, Lisette (Paulette Dubost), unaware that his boss also has his eye on her. The passionate Jurieu, the only guest incapable of the appropriate hypocrisy, finds Christine in an embrace with a random lover (Pierre Nay), and the startled woman decides to leave Robert and go away with the aviator. Renoir's subtle deployment of long tracking shots in multiplanar deep focus reveals the relations of both groups and individuals as he dismantles the rituals of hypocrisy that make this society run smoothly.

Customer Reviews

Funny, true and touching
I won't go on about it but I liked this film a lot. It is mostly a comedy about the social mores of the super rich, but it's a really well done piece of observation about different attitudes to adultery and love. I recommend it to anyone who likes well-made old films.

A perfect film
This is the one film that everyone should see, and that everyone should see several times. It is the best film ever made by a very long way, in a different class to the American and British pretenders.
Ostensibly, it is a triangle of love triangles, but it goes so much further. It is dark, funny, moving, deep, complex and incisive. It is a film that is not only essential on DVD, but the only one that makes it essential to own a DVD player - just so you can watch this film over and over.
Yes, it is in French, but don't let that put you off. It could be the only subtitled film you ever see (although you would be missing out on many other fine films, of course). If this were the only film (foreign or otherwise) I were ever allowed to watch for the rest of my life, I would be happy.

The Greatest Film Ever Made
I am delighted that at last this film is available on DVD. This is the finest film that has ever been made, streets ahead of any pretenders. If you only own one DVD, and I'm serious about this, it should be this one. In fact, I've read reviewers who recommend watching this film again every month as both therapy and education. I have seen it many times, and it just gets better and better. Yes, it is in French, but why should that stop you? It is also absolutely brilliant from start to finish in every department.
I don't want to try encapsulating the plot, because discovering it for the first time as it unwinds is something you will cherish. Then you will want to revisit it.
All I can say is that I hope the rest of Renoir's films are going to be coming out on DVD - they're not up there with this one, but they are all worth seeing. I think a lot of people will want to see more of them once they have watched this one.
What more do I need to say? It's better than the Godfather films, it's better than Star Wars, it's better than Casablanca or Pulp Fiction. If you have a DVD collection without it, then your collection is only second best.