216 The Rules of the Game

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Shrew
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#26 Post by Shrew » Tue Dec 18, 2007 11:34 pm

Every society has kings that did stupid things. Shakespeare has no social relevance.
Every society has a working class. Communism has no social relevance.
Every society has wars. Anti-war movies have no social relevance.
Every society has pedants. I have no social relevance.

I think the relevance was feeding it to that class of rich snobs and assholes.

ezmbmh
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#27 Post by ezmbmh » Tue Dec 18, 2007 11:37 pm

Petty Bourgeoisie wrote:I bought Rules of the Game last month because of the $19.99 deal at Amazon. I give it a 10 for style and technique, but only a 4 for emotional resonance. And it's social relevance is overblown. Every single society, past and present, has a caste of over-indulgent, rich jerks. That's not a revelation.


No, the revelation is in the way Renoir simultaneously exposes and understands the "jerks." Divorcing style and technique from the underlying theme of human possibility, failure, energy is enough to dry out any work of art. I'd say, if every society has its caste of over-indulgent rich jerks-no argument there--every society needs a Renoir to show us in our endless baseness and humanity, one and the same.

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GringoTex
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#28 Post by GringoTex » Wed Dec 19, 2007 12:44 am

Petty Bourgeoisie wrote:And it's social relevance is overblown. Every single society, past and present, has a caste of over-indulgent, rich jerks. That's not a revelation.
Somebody is very ignorant about World War 2. This is what happens when younguns seperate aesthetics from history.

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Petty Bourgeoisie
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#29 Post by Petty Bourgeoisie » Wed Dec 19, 2007 1:29 am

GringoTex wrote:
Petty Bourgeoisie wrote:And it's social relevance is overblown. Every single society, past and present, has a caste of over-indulgent, rich jerks. That's not a revelation.
Somebody is very ignorant about World War 2. This is what happens when younguns seperate aesthetics from history.
And I assume that somebody is me? Let's have a reality check here guys. Rules of the Game is NOT about how to sleepwalk your walk into genocide. It's motives seem to be far less grand. It's about the shenanigans of the bourgeoise and their flunkies. It is a send-up of their lifestyle and world. I watched The Testament of Dr. Mabuse recently, and that's a film that psychologically dissects how the immoral road towards WWII was paved.

For me Rules of the Game is aesthetically amazing but emotionally (and politically) dry. The deep political subcurrents that some people sense, I simply don't. But then some people think the Mabuse films are simply overdressed pulp material about a criminal mastermind, so some films resonate differently with different people, that's all.

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#30 Post by Napoleon » Wed Dec 19, 2007 5:48 am

Petty Bourgeoisie wrote:Every single society, past and present, has a caste of over-indulgent, rich jerks. That's not a revelation.
If you are are hating the characters, then it is possible that you are missing the beauty of Renoir. These people are not jerks and Renoir did not intend or think of them as jerks. Aspects of their personality might make them appear that way, but these are fully formed, living breathing characters. Foibles and all are captured and put on screen.

Give it another chance. In fact give it several more chances.

And don't get too hung up on the subtext that these people are sleepwalking into WW2. It isn't pivotal to appreciating the film.

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Petty Bourgeoisie
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#31 Post by Petty Bourgeoisie » Wed Dec 19, 2007 11:24 am

Napoleon wrote: If you are are hating the characters, then it is possible that you are missing the beauty of Renoir. These people are not jerks and Renoir did not intend or think of them as jerks. Aspects of their personality might make them appear that way, but these are fully formed, living breathing characters. Foibles and all are captured and put on screen.

Give it another chance. In fact give it several more chances.
Thanks, I definitely will.

[/quote="Napoleon"]And don't get too hung up on the subtext that these people are sleepwalking into WW2. It isn't pivotal to appreciating the film.[/quote]

That's what's I've been saying but most people seem to think it's the fulcrum of the film. By the way, I guess now is not a good time to tell everyone I found Sansho the Bailiff to be maudlin. :D

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Petty Bourgeoisie
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#32 Post by Petty Bourgeoisie » Wed Dec 19, 2007 11:37 am

Shrew wrote:Every society has kings that did stupid things. Shakespeare has no social relevance.
Every society has a working class. Communism has no social relevance.
Every society has wars. Anti-war movies have no social relevance.
Every society has pedants. I have no social relevance.

I think the relevance was feeding it to that class of rich snobs and assholes.
The social relevance of Shakespeare in 2007 is debatable.
Communism is socially irrelevant in 2007 because it's a dusty old economic theory that's never been practiced.
Anti-War movies are definitely socially irrelevant because wars go on.
Not knowing you, I have no feelings on whether you have any social relevance.

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HerrSchreck
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#33 Post by HerrSchreck » Wed Dec 19, 2007 11:37 am

Petty Bourgeoisie wrote:I bought Rules of the Game last month because of the $19.99 deal at Amazon. I give it a 10 for style and technique, but only a 4 for emotional resonance. And it's social relevance is overblown. Every single society, past and present, has a caste of over-indulgent, rich jerks. That's not a revelation.
Not every society, past and present, had a WW2 -- safe to say? A world war that almost ended the planet... coming on the heels of a world war where no lessons were apparently learned?

EDIT: whoops I see this was addressed already. The whole "dancing on a volcano" thing is not key to enjoying the film, but certainly has a lot to do with understanding the "mission" Renoir had when he set out to make the film. And plays into what I meant when I said that none of the characters articulate the theme of the film which is that "France/the world is going to hell in a handbasket."

Hey nobody is obligated to like anything, to each his own. But if you're going to come on a CC forum and blast an undisputed masterpiece on what you consider to be it's Mission Terms.. at least know what the mission was.

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Petty Bourgeoisie
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#34 Post by Petty Bourgeoisie » Wed Dec 19, 2007 11:47 am

HerrSchreck wrote:
Petty Bourgeoisie wrote:I bought Rules of the Game last month because of the $19.99 deal at Amazon. I give it a 10 for style and technique, but only a 4 for emotional resonance. And it's social relevance is overblown. Every single society, past and present, has a caste of over-indulgent, rich jerks. That's not a revelation.
Not every society, past and present, had a WW2 -- safe to say? A world war that almost ended the planet... coming on the heels of a world war where no lessons were apparently learned?
I don't want to keep posting on this thread because i feel like I'm hijacking it. But I continue to be confused by the conflation of Rules of the Game and WWII. Everybody please stop insisting there is a link and tell me WHY there is link. What passages of dialogue, what allusions, what sense of foreboding? Anything you can point to in order to make the connection? If we take this scenario to it's logical extreme then we can say that Wall Street was a trenchant analysis of the American mindset that got us involved in the Gulf War and thus Gulf War part II. This is all meant as friendly discourse as i don't want to come off as a curmudgeon.

Edit: I posted this before your edit, so maybe we should drop the WWII topic. :)

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tryavna
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#35 Post by tryavna » Wed Dec 19, 2007 12:12 pm

Petty Bourgeoisie wrote:The social relevance of Shakespeare in 2007 is debatable.
Communism is socially irrelevant in 2007 because it's a dusty old economic theory that's never been practiced.
Anti-War movies are definitely socially irrelevant because wars go on.
I'm not sure if all these parts of your post were meant to be tongue-in-cheek too, but I've totally lost you here. What does count as "socially relevant" to you?

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Steven H
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#36 Post by Steven H » Wed Dec 19, 2007 12:13 pm

"It's a war film, and yet there is no reference to the war. Beneath it's seemingly innocuous appearance the story attacks the very structure of our society. Yet all I thought about at the beginning was nothing avant-garde but a good little orthodox film. People go to the cinema in hopes of forgetting their everyday problems, and it was precisely their own worries that I plunged them into... The truth is that they recognized themselves. People who commit suicide do not care to do it in front of witnesses.
- Jean Renoir
"My Life and My Films"

"When I made The Rules of the Game I knew where I was going. I knew the evil that gnawed at my contemporaries. My instinct guided me, my awareness of the imminent danger led me to the situations and the dialogue. And my friends were like me. How worried we were! I think the film is a good one. But it is not so difficult to work well when the compass of anxiety points in the true direction."
- Jean Renoir
"Jean Renoir" (Bazin)

Maybe this helps?

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skuhn8
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#37 Post by skuhn8 » Wed Dec 19, 2007 12:23 pm

Have you seen the film? or at least the first minute? He says something about ...as we stand on the verge of the next global calamity or some such. I don't have it in front of me but he's pretty clear about setting some agenda there.

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HerrSchreck
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#38 Post by HerrSchreck » Wed Dec 19, 2007 12:31 pm

Edit: I posted this before your edit, so maybe we should drop the WWII topic. .
First off imho nobody should feel bad or oblivious for NOT liking a film that gets voted "mindbending masterpiece" on S&S best of lists etc. It's just art & entertainment.

But I'll respond to your original questions, it's not hijacking, it's totally what this thread s/b about (its better than chucking cover art around... I think..). And it's better than an empty thread.

On my end I luuuvvv when someone manages to make a point without having to keep slamming the point home. The manipulative cinema of today gives us gobs of that. For me the peak of narrative skill is when someone manages to make a point (or evoke something, anything... a time, or place, a feeling, etc) without ever having it articulated onscreen or in words. I went on at length about that in my post on Pick & Mayer's Sylvester, which is a film without intertitles, and makes a sublime point about Acceptance and Equanimity vs life in the world (an almost Buddhist sentiment.. mono no aware) by simple, pure images. That's "pure cinema".

RULES on the other hand: we know from Renoir's notes and preparation, interviews with him and those around him-- the way we know anything about any film-- that he set out to make a comedy of manners about the contemporary French bourgoisie "dancing (obliviously) on a volcano".. meaning on the precipice of war.. and yet so concerned with their idiotic rituals of self-involved dramas. Many folks will tell you (rightly or wrongly) that WW2 happened because of what France and Britain didn't do.. not because of what Hitler did. Hitler bet over and over again (keeping his general-staff generals in a state of nervous breakdown in those early years because they knew the Allies surrounding them on both sides could have obliterated Germany in those early years) that nobody would interfere with his mini invasions-- the Rhineland, Austria, Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, the Poland... simply because they were too decadent, self-involved, satisfied, and conflict-averse. Bteween 1936-9 Hitler was allowed to inflate slowly but surely, little grabs here and there, by passive non-entities to the west who maintained a Special Blind Spot for this crazy little roaring man: "Oh him.. tsk" (teeth suck & poo-pooing hand wave) "he's not even an aristocrat.. plus he was just a corporal; he couldn't start a war by falling out of bed. Now where's my crackers-- the caviar's getting sticky here". By the time they finally put down the crackers and slipped in the monocle, took off the dressing gown and listened to the wireless, they realized, too late, that not only was the little bastard serious, but that he had doubled, tripled his manpower, armaments production, cranked out a heavily advanced quantity of re-armament, trained the shit out of a huge army, and had already occupied POland and was now aiming at France. And STILL they wouldn't fucking wake up and buy some cojones. They kept handing "the amusing little corporal" the initiative time and time again because they were having a blast riding horses, hunting fox, going after rabbits, having bored sex and filling pools with champagne.

In one specific sense this movie is frozen in the time it was made: it's 1938/9 France right outside those windows, beyond the hunting grounds, and always should be. It's probably best not to see it as one of those "any time, any place" films (even though in terms of the human drama and the achievement of the technique, the mise en scene, the perfect script, etc, it absolutely can be enjoyed without considering the outside world at the time it was made... but remembering the line "the hallmark of wealth/aristocracy is Responsibility", and the goings on in the world, brings Renoir's unspoken point all the way home).

But how do you show onscreen What People Are Not Doing? Show them Not Doing It. Should Renoir have intercut footage of invasions and contemporary human suffering, or had scenes where the wireless is talking about the mad rampages of a vitriolic dictator.. and had some drunken partygoer drop a monocle into the pate' and say "Isn't that announcer's voice simply vulgar? So throaty and coarse," and move to turn the radio off? I think that would have been contrived, and too "blatant" an indictment.

Because the great paradox (for me anyhoo) is that though Ren loathes their irresponsibility, he understands them and sees the big picture of humanity well enough to understand that, in terms of "blame", "it's the world they live in,". They're programmed the way they are.. and rather than zeroing in to blast any single factor, he simply backs off in a moral sense to simply let the wide world in, in all it's fullness. You figure out who's to blame... you can watch it and say "we're fucking doomed as a planet", or you can say "they're actually pretty cool people there, and what is that little hunting party supposed to do as individuals anyway?" He's reproduced in that little clique the impossibility, the coolness, the utter stupidity, the sadness, the understanding and the misunderstanding of real life in a tragic world always a notch away from it's own destruction.

EDIT: that quote about "war films are irrelevant because war goes on" makes me want to... hang myself? go out and strangle someone? It certainly makes me regret my thought out reply here in this post.

That's-- and I'm sorry-- one of the dumbest things I've ever heard on this or any forum. Why bother doing anything?[/quote]
Last edited by HerrSchreck on Wed Dec 19, 2007 12:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Petty Bourgeoisie
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#39 Post by Petty Bourgeoisie » Wed Dec 19, 2007 12:33 pm

Steven H wrote:"It's a war film, and yet there is no reference to the war. Beneath it's seemingly innocuous appearance the story attacks the very structure of our society. Yet all I thought about at the beginning was nothing avant-garde but a good little orthodox film. People go to the cinema in hopes of forgetting their everyday problems, and it was precisely their own worries that I plunged them into... The truth is that they recognized themselves. People who commit suicide do not care to do it in front of witnesses.
- Jean Renoir
"My Life and My Films"

"When I made The Rules of the Game I knew where I was going. I knew the evil that gnawed at my contemporaries. My instinct guided me, my awareness of the imminent danger led me to the situations and the dialogue. And my friends were like me. How worried we were! I think the film is a good one. But it is not so difficult to work well when the compass of anxiety points in the true direction."
- Jean Renoir
"Jean Renoir" (Bazin)

Maybe this helps?
Well it definitely proves to me that Renoir was a fantastic writer. But even after reading these excerpts I still feel a disconnect. The film just doesn't seem as weighty and significant as his writings and the general consensus on this forum would have it be. I'll just have to stick to my lonely contrarian position regarding Rules of the Game. But of course I promised earlier to rewatch it and I'll hold up my end of the bargain.

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Petty Bourgeoisie
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#40 Post by Petty Bourgeoisie » Wed Dec 19, 2007 12:50 pm

HerrSchreck wrote:
Edit: I posted this before your edit, so maybe we should drop the WWII topic. .
EDIT: that quote about "war films are irrelevant because war goes on" makes me want to... hang myself? go out and strangle someone? It certainly makes me regret my thought out reply here in this post.

That's-- and I'm sorry-- one of the dumbest things I've ever heard on this or any forum. Why bother doing anything?
Please don't strangle anyone on account of my sense of humor. Actually it was half joke, half serious. When I wrote it I was thinking of Godard's response to Farhenheit 9/11. He stated that it actually helped The Powers That Be in a twisted way that a man like Moore couldn't understand. That was a truly insightful analysis as that film and it's grand prize helped win the 2004 election for the U.S. neocons (not solely of course but it helped). And please don't regret your post. I appreciated the insights.

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skuhn8
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#41 Post by skuhn8 » Wed Dec 19, 2007 12:57 pm

[edit] crap post
Last edited by skuhn8 on Thu Dec 20, 2007 4:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Michael
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#42 Post by Michael » Wed Dec 19, 2007 5:32 pm

I revisited Rules of the Game last night. Whoa, now I'm getting it. Amazing how the flaws you pick up on the first viewing magically smooth out , becoming flawless the next viewing or two. One of many, many things that hit me last night was it somehow mirrored myself..for instance, earlier I mentioned how I cringed at the bunny getting shot and dying slowly but then last night I came to realize that I'm just like one of those folks, I'm a hypocrite because I love to eat meat and also wear leather.

Rules of the Game is a very gorgeous film and yes, it's a lot more moving than I initially thought. Every character in the film is a poet in his own way.

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Rowan
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#43 Post by Rowan » Wed Dec 19, 2007 5:43 pm

I love Rules of the Game. There's something fresh and vital about it, a feeling of sensory contact, in spite of the quick-fire wordiness of the script, that always draws me back. Contrary to the supposed allure of fulsome characterisation, humanity ‘in the round', it's the vacuity that really gets me – the feeling that the characters don't quite know why they do what they do, and love who they love, and yet at the same time that a peripheral awareness of their own ambiguity is almost what drives them. The insight of the film for me is rather a sense that within certain social and behavioural strictures/indulgences ‘humanity' becomes impossible, or, at the very least, stylised to such a degree that responsibility, communication and self-knowledge are rendered inappropriate. The broadness of certain scenes, the farcical elements and the almost painful simplicity of a character like Schumacher seemed grating at first, but on subsequent viewings made perfect sense.

In this way I think the film is entirely universal/timeless. I don't believe an emphasis on the looming of the war is a ‘necessary' context in order to appreciate the film (decadence juxtaposed with fighting Hitler is one thing, but offset against a void of its own making…). I think when I first saw ROTG it really clicked towards the end; the mise en scene takes a surreal turn in the darkness - the cloaked Christine, the meeting in the glasshouse, and the classical statue with frogs and slime beneath. Also the final image of the shadows passing out of frame haunts me no end.

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sevenarts
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#44 Post by sevenarts » Thu Dec 20, 2007 11:49 am

Michael wrote:for instance, earlier I mentioned how I cringed at the bunny getting shot and dying slowly but then last night I came to realize that I'm just like one of those folks, I'm a hypocrite because I love to eat meat and also wear leather.
For me, this scene totally doesn't work because it winds up saying so much more about the filmmakers than the characters in the film. I believe there have been conversations here in the past about the effect or worth of real animal deaths in fiction films, and I definitely am of the opinion that they disrupt the film's reality by intruding with real reality. In this case, the scene is meant to be a condemnation of the film's hunters, with the shocking brutality of all the dying animals shown in those rapid edits -- but I can't watch it without thinking that it's not the film's hunters who are really killing these animals, but the filmmakers. It completely takes me out of the film every time. I'm not a vegetarian either, so maybe this makes me a hypocrite as well, but the filmmakers killing animals just so they can make the point that their characters are committing brutalities by killing animals... it just seems a little off.

The fact that this scene seems to be the crux of the film for so many of its admirers probably explains why this film has left me a little cold as a whole. I can appreciate its artifice and construction, and the historical context of its intended WW2 meaning adds to its significance, but it doesn't resonate emotionally with me at all.

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skuhn8
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#45 Post by skuhn8 » Thu Dec 20, 2007 12:42 pm

Never have our furry little friends been sacrifised for a grander cause! They're dead; the movie is made. I don't think their demise was made any worse by having a camera fixed on them.

With all this debate I had to rewatch Rules of the Game again last night. This has been in my top ten since the first time I saw it. It never lags, none of the scenes linger on a moment more than necessary. I love how the half prior to the hunt is consumed with frivolity and play, action without consequence. Driving a car into ditch--not a scratch; ending an illicit affair--oh, I can't hate you. Beautiful. Then the hunt marks the point when these games are going to be for keeps. Blood has spilled; prepare for the sacrifice of the innocent. Gun play results in expulsion from the 'paradise' of the manor; infidelity brings about murder. But once the body has fallen it's back to the game. Schumacher merely committed an accident. Never mind that they had intended to kill Octave only minutes before, now they're talking casually.

But this time, following those posts above, I listened for dialogue that could in any way be suggestive of the times. Never do we hear a radio broadcast burbling about Hitler's latest conquest. But from Schumacher we get something to the effect of "in the war we would've know what to do with the likes of him". Not very telling, perhaps; but more interesting is Marceau--when he explains to Cheyniest why he has always wanted to be a domestic: "I've always dreamed of wearing a uniform". Schumacher was probably the only one old enough to fight in the trenches. Marceau may have been a shirker, but was more likely a year or two shy of being old enough and thus has some small hint of romanticism for the fight. But this is probably trying too hard to find something.

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ellipsis7
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#46 Post by ellipsis7 » Thu Dec 20, 2007 12:51 pm

Maybe if you consider LA VIE EST A NOUS (1936) the collaborative documentary led by Jean Renoir for the Partie Communiste Francaise, contains scenes of fascist riots in France, Hitler overdubbed with a barking dog, a sequence focussing on the fact that 'France belongs to 200 families not the French', and the struggle for workers' rights through strike and protest, along with the brief dramatic depiction of members of the bourgeoisie taking target practice at images of the proletariat, shooting at lifesize cardboard cutouts wearing workers' caps the point of the shoot in LA REGLE becomes clearer... In the film the only character who is worth anything, has done anything significant, Andre Jurieu, is also farcically shot by the gamekeeper Schumacher (Germanic name) in an 'unfortunate accident', barely disturbing the house party... De La Chesnaye, who has made this dismissive declaration of his friend's demise, 'showing class', spends his time tinkering with his mechanical dolls and toys, while contrastingly the film opens with a real technological advance, the radio, telling of an actual achievement of Jurieu mastering another modernist machine, the airplane, to fly the Atlantic singlehanded in record time....

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GringoTex
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#47 Post by GringoTex » Thu Dec 20, 2007 9:47 pm

Petty Bourgeoisie wrote: Everybody please stop insisting there is a link and tell me WHY there is link.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of words published that address this very question. Why are asking for an amateur stop gap in an internet forum when you can get professional help at the local library?
sevenarts wrote: In this case, the scene is meant to be a condemnation of the film's hunters, with the shocking brutality of all the dying animals shown in those rapid edits -- but I can't watch it without thinking that it's not the film's hunters who are really killing these animals, but the filmmakers.
You're projecting circa 2000 animal rights morality onto the film. Yes, Renoir is condemning the hunters in this film, but it's not because they shoot rabbits. Renoir is not an animal rights activist! The important element is why they shoot rabbits, not that they shoot rabbits. The cruelty lies in the characters' expresions, not in the twitching of a furry leg. This isn't a Walt Disney film.

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#48 Post by BrianInAtlanta » Fri Dec 21, 2007 2:55 pm

Here's how I would explain the political background of Rules (and, by the way, this isn't a political creed; just an attempt to get across the reaction at the time and afterwards in France).

Imagine if in 2001, Alec Baldwin made a dramatic-comedy about a group of self-absorbed Texas Republicans with Baldwin playing a character on the margin of their world. The movie comes out after 9/11, is viciously roasted in the press as a ill-timed attack on the President by the left-leaning Baldwin at a time of national crisis and forgotten.

Then comes the Iraq War, opinions about the President change and the film gets re-released in a very different political climate. Now reviewers all talk about it as an expose of the world that led us to the Iraq War.

Skip 50 years later and people in a future Criterion forum are wondering why Baldwin's film has not a mention of President Bush or the Iraq War in it.

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Lemmy Caution
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#49 Post by Lemmy Caution » Fri Dec 21, 2007 5:02 pm

I really love Renoir films, especially his 30's output. But never really could get interested in Rules. I've seen it three times. The first time in a French film class with a very good professor. And as recently as 3 years ago. Sure it looks great and moves along, but I just find the characters too disagreeable that by the time of the hunt I'm too detached and not much interested.

So I can understand the gist of Petty Bourgeoisie's dismay with the film. I think that the characters themselves and what they represent can get in the way of engaging with the film. Perhaps it is also off-putting how much solicitude for and understanding of these people Renoir displays. I always get impatient when watching the film, so it at least gets a reaction out of me.

I have no problem not liking a film that others view as a masterpiece, but do feel a little distressed when this occurs with a Renoir.
Maybe after I finish the early Renoir set I'll give it another try.

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Magic Hate Ball
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#50 Post by Magic Hate Ball » Tue Jun 10, 2008 12:11 am

Well, that's another Criterion under the old belt.

I went into seeing this with really no knowledge of its place in cinema history other than the fact that it was panned when it first came out because everyone took it as a personal insult. I didn't think of it as anything other than "an old French film", and it had no tremendous statue of worth in my mind. Reading some reviews, I see that a lot of people were disappointed by it, partially due to its standing in the textbooks, and it's lucky that I was unaware of that, because I enjoyed it like hell. It's obvious that it inspired more than a few films (Smiles of a Summer Night, La Dolce Vita, and Gosford Park, to name a few), and it's easy to see why. The subject, while narrow in one sense, is somewhat broader in relation to its themes ("everyone sucks, but whatever, we can still get it on").

The story is a massive tangle of characters, which consist of "doubles" in the upper and lower classes, and strict attention is pretty much mandatory. It pays off, of course; by the end of the film, we're closely acquainted with every character, good and bad, which allows us to actually take something with us when the climax occurs. This investment in characters comes so easily; there is just enough exposition and just enough plot that we don't feel bored or rushed. Smiles Of A Summer Night didn't quite work for me because the exposition and plot were like oil and vinegar.

Visually, the film is wonderful in a static way. Renoir's camera never moves without purpose; whether to illustrate a metaphor or to frame a character, the cause is always logical. It's easy today to be saturated with spastic cameras that whip about like drunkards, or, worse, the handheld-seizure format (which is the subject of great debates; some argue that it effectively puts the viewer in with the gritty action onscreen, others believe it just jostles the audience out of their suspension of disbelief), and it's nice to see a film, while not modern, that doesn't play like an avant-garde documentary on speedballs.

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