The Rules of the Game
BUY AT:
See more details, packaging, or compare
Synopsis
Considered one of the greatest films ever made, Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game is a scathing critique of corrupt French society cloaked in a comedy of manners in which a weekend at a marquis’s country château lays bare some ugly truths about a group of haut bourgeois acquaintances. The film has had a tumultuous history: it was subjected to cuts after the violent response of the audience at its 1939 premiere, and the original negative was destroyed during World War II; it wasn’t reconstructed until 1959. That version, which has stunned viewers for decades, is presented here.
Picture 8/10
The Criterion Collection revisits (again) Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, presenting the film in 4K on a dual-layer BD-66 disc in the aspect ratio of 1.37:1. The 2160p/24hz ultra high-definition encode is sourced from a 2021 4K restoration taken from the “mostly” nitrate composite dupe negative and presented in 10-bit SDR. The release also includes a standard dual-layer Blu-ray disc featuring a 1080p presentation of the film. That presentation is sourced from Criterion’s 2003 restoration used for all their previous releases.
As noted many times before, the film has had a rather rough go at it when it comes to restorations through the decades, all due to its unfortunate history. The film went through multiple cuts before its premiere in 1939 to an audience that wasn’t at all receptive to it, to say the least (news from the time indicates one audience member tried to burn the theater down). The film would bomb before being banned that same year and the negatives would eventually be destroyed in a bombing raid during World War II. With Renoir’s approval, the film was reconstructed in 1959 using the best available elements. However, since the negatives were long gone, this was limited to later-generation sources with a dupier quality. Right out of the gate, they will be limited in contrast and detail, which is not ideal for most modern restorations, especially 4K ones.
Despite all of that, Criterion’s end presentation comes out looking rather impressive. The image is never razor-sharp, but plenty of moments come pretty close, and the finer details and textures present are more distinguishable here compared to Criterion’s previous releases.
As great as that all is, the most considerable improvement by far is the film’s contrast and dynamic range. This aspect was limited in the previous releases, looking a little blown out at times with darker sequences (like the film’s opening) featuring heavy blacks accompanied by limited range and detail. The spectrum, as it is, is a bit wider during the darker opening sequence, allowing for a little more detail to be present, but the rest of the film is even more impressive. Grayscale is significantly wider with cleaner gradations, most notable in the shots featuring the sky, allowing for more detail in the process. Some dupier shots are still limited regarding contrast and grayscale, but even they look better compared to the old Blu-ray. HDR could have probably given things a nice little boost (I’m a fan of HDR in black-and-white films), but I’m not missing its lack of presence here. It does fine all on its own.
Some minor marks and faint scratches pop up here and there, but the restoration work has removed much of what was present in previous releases, and this is easily the cleanest I’ve ever seen the film look. I also thought the encode looks rather remarkable, rendering the film’s grain wonderfully (there is one shot of a gramophone where the grain seems odd, but I suspect it was a single frame copied across multiple frames during the 1959 reconstruction).
Yes, a 1080p presentation would have sufficed since the source materials limit the image. Yet this managed to exceed my expectations, and I found it very stunning.
The Rules of the Game - Screen Captures
Audio 6/10
Yet again, the film’s monaural French audio is presented in lossless PCM. I found it a little “cleaner” compared to the previous releases, though I’m guessing it is due to the audio being filtered. The track is generally flat with limited range and fidelity. It’s about what I was expecting, though.
Extras 9/10
Outside of an included commentary (found on both discs), all features are located on the included dual-layer Blu-ray disc that also holds a high-definition presentation of the film (sourced from the 2003 restoration). Outside of the disc art (which matches this release’s new artwork), the disc replicates the original 2011 Blu-ray exactly.
Things start again with Criterion’s audio commentary (again, found on both discs) from their 1989 LaserDisc edition. The track features director Peter Bogdanovich reading from film scholar Alexander Sesonske’s writings on the film. Though it still sounds like Bogdanovich is, barreling through things as quickly as he can, the track still offers a significant level of technical information related to Renoir’s use of the camera, how he set up his scenes, editing style, and how the framing and positioning of characters conveys all one needs to know about them. He also covers the politics in France at the time, which included the looming Nazi threat, before getting into the characters and how they are represented, along with Renoir’s thoughts on their class and status. He breaks down some sequences, like the hunting one, but there are a few moments where it feels like he’s just reiterating what’s on screen. A new track would have been welcome, but this now 34-year-old one still holds up reasonably well.
Jean Renoir’s introduction from 1959 pops up again, featuring the director going over the film’s history, his intentions behind it, and the then-current reconstruction, which he is clearly excited about.
That intro then works as a nice lead into the issue the bulk of the features cover, which is the film’s reconstruction. Playing by Different Rules is a section devoted to the differences between an earlier re-edited Renoir version, which runs 81 minutes, and the newly reconstructed version, which runs 106 minutes. The original premiere version, which ran 94 minutes, is mentioned here, but since it is lost, we only hear of it and don’t get any direct comparisons. A version comparison assembled by Chris Faulkner and running 13 minutes uses a split screen to compare the 81-minute version on the left and the 106-minute version on the right to show the many edits that occurred, concentrating primarily on the ending. Here you get a good idea of how much was cut and also see how the film changed so drastically from its original intention. As a bonus, we also get the 8-minute shorter ending as it ran in the 81-minute version of the film. The DVD edition contained a text feature offering an analysis of the film’s script, which was pretty much thrown out the door and repurposed during the shoot. That feature is still not here, but Criterion has added a similar feature elsewhere.
Scene Analysis features Faulkner again, this time offering what could be called mini-commentaries for sections of the film. The first, a more than 5-minute piece called “Public and Private,” has Faulkner talk over various scenes from the film, concentrating primarily on the opening and some of the end, with a few mid-sections thrown in. It looks at how Renoir presents the public and private sides of the characters through dialogue or framing and lighting. “Corridor” is a less-than 3-minute piece, which plays the same shot in a loop, where Andre and Robert are walking through the corridor near the end, commenting on how good a chap Octave is. Here Faulkner talks about Renoir’s depth-of-field and the staging of actions in the background. Both prove to be involving additions, building off what Bogdanovich/Sesonske set up in the commentary track.
Jean Renoir, Le patron is the second episode in a series of three about Jean Renoir made for the French television program Cineastes de notre temps and filmed by Jacques Rivette. This section concentrates primarily on The Rules of the Game. Presenting an interview between the two, Renoir talks about why he came to make the film (he was upset with the state of the upper-middle class in France, finding them revolting people) and the process of making it. Here he talks about the various characters, particularly Christine and Octave, and the improvisation that went into the film, which was surprisingly a lot. It sounds as though Renoir knew the film’s outcome and how certain scenes would finish but made up the specific details on the spot. (SPOILER ALERT!) For example, he knew a particular character would die at the end but wasn’t sure how, and it wasn’t until the hunting scene that he realized how it would play out. Based on this episode, which is very candid and entertaining, it’s a shame Criterion didn’t include the other episode, though they have been spread across other titles.
Criterion then includes a 1-hour BBC documentary from 1995 by David Thompson called Jean Renoir. It’s pretty by the numbers but offers a thorough look into Renoir’s early life and career. It looks at essential films in his career, including Boudu Saved From Drowning, and the development of his compositions, followed by the success of Grand Illusion and the disaster of The Rules of the Game. Mixed into the documentary are interviews with various people, including Rules cast member Paulette Dubost, filmmakers such as Peter Bogdanovich, Louis Malle, Bernardo Bertolucci, Claude Chabrol, and Bertrand Tavernier, and family and friends of the director. There’s also archival footage of the director. A little dry and, again, somewhat by the numbers but an excellent bio on the filmmaker.
A section called Production History presents a few more pieces about the film’s fascinating past. Chris Faulkner again offers his insights, giving us a quick 8-minute presentation about the film’s production from the script to casting to shooting, followed by its rather brutal release, the re-edit that followed, and its eventual reconstruction.
A 28-minute interview with Olivier Curchod is next up. He starts off with some brief history about Renoir and his production company, moving on to the development of the script and then the actual shoot, which experienced its share of problems (budget overruns, performers dropping out, weather conditions, schedule conflicts, etc.) and how Renoir was able to get around them. He then goes into its disastrous premiere and why it likely failed. This then leads Curchod to talk about the cuts Renoir would make. It’s a pretty comprehensive account of the film’s issues, with some repetition from other features, but it at least expands some of the details only skirted over elsewhere on the disc. It also works as a replacement for the one that didn’t make it over from the DVD, the “Script Analysis,” which is all covered here.
Finally, in this section, we get an interview from 1945 with Jean Gaborit and Jacques Durand, the two responsible for the reconstruction. The two talk about their motivations and give accounts of finding the material and putting it together with Renoir’s help. It runs for 10 minutes.
Criterion next presents a few interviews, starting with one from 2003 with assistant production designer Max Doury. For 9 minutes, he talks about the political climate around the time the film was made and then transitions into discussing set pieces from the film, including the greenhouse, the interiors in the household, and then the use of enlarged photos for backgrounds.
There is then an edited piece featuring around 16 minutes worth of interview material with actress Mila Parley taken from a documentary by Jacques Motte. In these clips, she recalls the shoot and working with Renoir and the rest of the cast. A little slight, but it’s nice to get a firsthand account. Also significant is an interview with Alain Renoir, son of Jean Renoir. He talks about his father and his grandfather, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and working with his father on The Rules of the Game—a charming inclusion.
The booklet then appears to replicate the Blu-ray’s, first including an essay by Alexander Sesonske, followed by: an early scenario of the film by Jean Renoir (with some differences from the finished film, including different names for the characters,) an excerpt from Jean Renoir’s autobiography where he talks about the film, an appreciation by director Bertrand Tavernier, a translated reprint of a letter of appreciation director Francois Truffaut wrote to Renoir (with a copy of the original handwritten letter pictured next to it,) and then an excerpt from Truffaut’s memoir where he mentions the film. You’ll also find the same brief tributes to the film from Robert Altman, Cameron Crowe, Noah Baumbach, Paul Schrader, Alain Resnais, Wim Wenders, J. Hoberman, and others. (This was originally a text feature on the 2003 DVD.)
It’s still a shame Criterion doesn’t see fit to update their features when doing these 4K upgrades. However, I still enjoy all of this material, and it does a relatively thorough job covering the film and its legacy.
Closing
Sadly there are no new features, but they still thoroughly cover the film’s history and legacy, and the new 4K presentation looks magnificent compared to Criterion’s previous editions.
BUY AT:
