Anniversary of The Rules of the Game
On July 8, 1939 in the Parisian cinema "Coliseum" the premiere of the film "The Rules of the Game" by Jean Renoir took place.
So, on July 8, 1939 ... There is less than two months left before the beginning of the Second World War. Only the deaf and blind in France do not understand that war is inevitable. But the attitude to this fact in French society is ambiguous. A significant part of the French, including the French aristocracy, to the German aspirations for world domination is, to put it mildly, frivolously. And many in general are sympathetic to Hitler. Suffice it to say that three years before that, at the Berlin Olympiad of 1936, the French team was generally distinguished, in one burst of greeting Greetings with a Nazi salute.
And in these conditions, Jean Renoir, who adhered to, if not pro-communist, then certainly anti-Nazi views and, moreover, fought against Germans in the First World War and was crippled, produces a film farce. (About another movie masterpiece of Jean Renoir - "La Grande Illusion" - we already wrote.) However, Renoir himself called his film in the original credits "fun drama", "diverticement, not claiming a serious study of morals."
But the public understood everything. And realized that this is satire. Satire, first of all, on the aristocracy. But not only. But the simple French too. Understood and not accepted. The film was booed. Moreover, according to one of the actresses who starred in the film and attended the premiere, one audience set fire to a newspaper during the session. Later, he explained his act by the intention to burn the cinema theatre as a punishment for showing the film. (How similar is it to the recent actions of a Russian “monarchist” who directed either a truck or a tractor to the cinema theatre where "Matilda" was shown!)
French film critics took the film to the bayonets, describing it as unpatriotic, frivolous, unintelligible. And these were the softest characteristics.
In short, the movie at the box office failed and after 3 weeks was removed from the screen. A month later, it was generally prohibited as a "demoralizing government." When the Nazis after some time established their orders in Paris and in most of France, they supported the ban on this film.
The ban, the Nazi occupation, as well as the efforts of Renoir himself to improve the film by editing and recomposing led to the fact that many episodes were lost, and for some time it was believed that the film was irretrievably lost. But thanks to the efforts of many Renoir fans and true lovers of real cinema, by the end of the 50s they managed to recreate the film almost in its original form.
At the Venice International Film Festival in 1959, the second premiere of the film was held, after which it was recognized as a real film masterpiece. Since then, the film "The Rules of the Game" is regularly recognized by almost all of the best films of world cinema. However, not all. French film critic Georges Charensol, wrote: "The film "The Rules of the Game" was banned on the eve of the war and today would have been completely forgotten if someone had not had an annoying idea to bring it back to life."
Honestly, I do not know very well who Georges Charensol is and what useful he made. That is why he personally does not represent any authority for me. But guru of American film critics Roger Ebert wrote about this film: "This magical and elusive work, ... is 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."
And one of our favorite film directors, Bernardo Bertolucci, said about the film: “I would call Renoir my favorite director, he is everything to me, he is my father and my mother, and the number one film for me is "The Rules of the Game.”
According to the FilmGourmand version, the “The Rules of the Game” film has a rating of 8.321 and is ranked 399th in the FilmGourmand's Golden Thousand.
In the USSR, the film was not shown.
