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The Rules of the Game
Directed by
Jean Renoir
Not Rated
1939
1h 46m
Drama
,
Comedy
,
and more
7.9
97%
89%
Add to Watchlist
A bourgeois life in France at the onset of World War II, as the rich and their poor servants meet up at a French chateau.
More
Where to Watch The Rules of the Game
Kanopy
Free
Criterion Channel
Subscription
Amazon Video
Rent $2.69
Buy $14.99
+4 more
Cast of The Rules of the Game
Nora Gregor
Christine de la Cheyniest
Marcel Dalio
Robert de la Cheyniest
Jean Renoir
Octave
Paulette Dubost
Lisette, sa camériste
Roland Toutain
André Jurieux
Mila Parély
Geneviève de Marras
Julien Carette
Marceau, le braconnier
Gaston Modot
Edouard Schumacher, le garde-chasse
Anne Mayen
Jackie, nièce de Christine
Odette Talazac
Madame de la Plante
Claire Gérard
Madame de la Bruyère
Pierre Magnier
Le général
Eddy Debray
Corneille, le majordome
Pierre Nay
Monsieur de St. Aubin
Richard Francœur
Monsieur La Bruyère
Léon Larive
Le cuisinier
Lise Elina
Radio-Reporter
Nicolas Amato
L'invité sud-américain (uncredited)
Jacques Beauvais
Adolphe, un domestique (uncredited)
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Le domestique anglais (uncredited)
Celestin
Le garçon de cuisine (uncredited)
Tony Corteggiani
Berthelin (uncredited)
Géo Forster
L'invité efféminé (uncredited)
Camille François
La journaliste (uncredited)
Jenny Hélia
La servante (uncredited)
Maurice Marceau
Un garde-chasse (uncredited)
Marcel Melrac
Célestin, l'aide cuisinier
André Zwobada
L'ingénieur (uncredited)
Marguerite de Morlaye
une invitée
The Rules of the Game Ratings & Reviews
djagg
February 13, 2025
Keep it in your pants!! Fair warning: Loootta wild animals are killed but it is just one scene. Rough scene tho. Very callous
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
There are about a dozen genuine miracles in the history of cinema, and one of them is Jean Renoir's supreme 1939 tragi-comedy The Rules of the Game.
Detroit Free Press
John Monaghan
A disaster when initially released, the movie's reputation has only grown since.
Boston Globe
Mark Feeney
What ultimately defines the film, what makes it unforgettable, is its tragic gravity.
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
[The film] is a comedy, a tragedy, a portrait of class manners, a love story of touching caprice (who will Nora Grgor's Christine fall for? Whoever woos her at the right moment), and far and away the cinema's greatest midsummer night's dream.
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
So simple and so labyrinthine, so guileless and so angry, so innocent and so dangerous, that you can't simply watch it, you have to absorb it.
The New Yorker
David Denby
The word "Mozartean"... gets thrown around a little too eagerly by critics, but one movie, as almost everyone agrees, deserves this supreme benediction -- Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game.
Los Angeles Times
Mark Chalon Smith
On the surface, a lace of flirtations, insinuations and rejections compose the basic plotting. But Renoir uses flashes of accelerating drama to amplify his bigger points.
Variety
Variety Staff
As an experiment it's interesting, but Jean Renoir has made a common error: he attempts to crowd too many ideas into 80 minutes of film fare, resulting in confusion.
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
The mobile camera seems to be a member of the party, as it follows the almost balletically choreographed movements of the cast. The effect for the audience is transcendental. We are watching life at its messiest, unfolding at its most beautiful.
Chicago Reader
Dave Kehr
The film was withdrawn, recut, and eventually banned by the occupying forces for its "demoralizing" effects. It was not shown again in its complete form until 1965, when it became clear that here, perhaps, was the greatest film ever made.
Salon.com
Andrew O'Hehir
Like the very greatest artists in all media, Renoir was able to transcend his own perspective, his own prejudices, and glimpse something of the terror and wonder of human life, the pain of misapplied or rejected love, for rich as for poor.
Village Voice
Leslie Camhi
If you think you know it, see it again for its newly rediscovered depth of field, and even more, for its infinite wellsprings of character and empathy.
Lessons of Darkness
Nick Schager
A gorgeous, gracefully astute critique of pre-WWII French aristocracy.
New York Times
Howard Thompson
A deeply personal statement of unusual richness and complexity.
Michael J. Cinema
Michael J. Casey
Continues to shape and inspire the cinema of today and tomorrow.
The New Yorker
Pauline Kael
Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game is a love roundelay that accelerates and intensifies until it becomes a rare mingling of lyric poetry and macabre farce.
Hyperallergic
Eileen G'Sell
Jean Renoir's newly restored 1939 classic proves that lawless wealth - then as now - makes a marvelous farce of us all.
The Blu Spot
Jeff Beck
It may take its time in establishing its characters and their deeply-intermingled circumstances, but once the sparks start to fly, it becomes a remarkably entertaining satire that will have you transfixed with its shocking revelations and other surprises.
48 Hills
Dennis Harvey
It gradually grows more serious, all the while juggling a complex tonal and moral complexity...
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