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Film details
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Featuring
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Director
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Country
France
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Year
1939
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Genre
Drama
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Type
Film
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Category
Fiction
Alternative titles
- The Rules of the Game Alternative
- La Regle de Jeu Alternative French
Introduction
“While La Règle du jeu presents itself as a contrivance, a game with emotions, a toying with reality and illusion, it is also a self-portrait of rare depth.”
Roy Armes, French Cinema, 1985
In 1939 Jean Renoir, a director associated with the left wing Popular Front, turned his gaze away from working people to the haute bourgeoisie. Taking its cue from the classic stage farces of Musset and Beaumarchais, Renoir sets his action during a shooting weekend at a country house. It’s an upstairs-downstairs world where servants and masters become enmeshed in a tangle of desire, a jumble of motivations in which, in the film’s famous phrase, “Everyone has their reasons”. At the film’s centre is the amiable Octave (played by Renoir), whose best intentions lead to tragedy.
Shot in long, controlled takes that stress the depth of vision, Renoir’s depiction of an intransigent society teetering blithely into disaster was derided upon release and only later acclaimed as one of cinema’s most vital films.
American director Robert Altman paid tribute to La Règle du jeu with his own upstairs-downstairs country-manor murder mystery, Gosford Park (2002).
Cast & Credits
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Cast
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Christine de la Cheyniest
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Lisette, Christine's chambermaid
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Geneviève de Marras
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Charlotte de la Plante
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Madame de La Bruyère
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Jackie, Christine's niece
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radio reporter
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Marquis Robert de La Cheyniest
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Marceau, the poacher
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André Jurieux
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Schumacher, the gamekeeper
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Octave
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the general
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Corneille, the majordomo
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Saint-Aubin
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La Bruyère
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cook
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Berthelin, huntsman
Tony Corteggiani (uncredited)
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man
Roger Forster (uncredited)
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South American
Nicolas Amato (uncredited)
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engineer at Caudron
André Zwobada (uncredited)
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radio announcer
Camille François (uncredited)
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English servant
Henri Cartier-Bresson (uncredited)
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kitchen servant
Jenny Hélia (uncredited)
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Credits
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Direction:
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Director
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Assistant Director
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Assistant Director
Cartier, Henri (uncredited)
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Assistant Director
Carl Koch (uncredited)
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Script Girl
Dido Freire (uncredited)
Production:
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Production Company
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Unit Manager
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Production Manager
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Administrator
Writing:
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Scenario/Dialogue
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Screenplay Collaboration
Photography:
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Photography
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Photography
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Photography
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Photography
Stills:
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Stills Photography
Editing:
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Editor
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Editor
Design:
Costumes:
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Gowns
Coco Chanel (uncredited)
Music:
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Music
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Music Arranger
Joseph Kosma (uncredited)
Sound:
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Sound
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The Greatest Films of All Time 2012
Ranked 4th in the critics’ poll