- As far I as I can tell, the rules of the game seem to be that you can do whatever you want to whomever you want as long as you have a handy excuse. Such an excuse is provided, for example, by Christine de la Chesnaye (Nora Gregor) when her aristocratic husband Robert (Marcel Dalio) invites the famous pilot Andre Jurieux (Roland Toutain) to stay at their chateau for the weekend. Christine and Andre had a past, naturally, but she's happy to explain to the crowds that they are but old friends. Another excuse is provided at film's end for how Jurieux ended up shot dead by Schumacher (Gaston Modot), the estate's gamekeeper. What happens in the middle is the essence of Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game.
- In depicting the events surrounding the chateau retreat, the film provides a glimpse of French high society and its servants who tag along for the ride. In addition to the de la Chesnayes, the upper class is represented by the stodgy General (Pierre Magnier), the Falstaffian Octave (Renoir, also the film's best actor), and the decadent Genevieve (Mila Parely), the latter of whom is involved in an ongoing affair with Robert. The servants, including Schumacher and his wife Lisette (Paulette Dubost), are remarkably loyal to these employers, if not to one another. Lisette, for example, implies affection for a poacher named Marceau (Julien Carette) and for the lovable Octave, but never for her doggedly faithful husband. Of course, she is hardly different in this sense from her idol Christine, who is involved in some sort of love quadrilateral between her husband, Jurieux, and Octave. The relationships are striking in their arbitrariness, and that's part of the point.
- As the hunt proceeds and the play is performed, we gradually get the sense that the only constant in this film is Jurieux. He flew across the Atlantic for Christine, and he has never stopped loving her and only her. Presumably because of this rare manifestation of devotion, he is also the one who must die in a tragic case of multiply mistaken identity. Whereas I was immensely impressed with Renoir's brilliant La Grande Illusion, I'm left not knowing how to evaluate this offering. It is very well-directed, particularly during the fast-moving and brutally depicted hunting scenes, and it is certainly more socially incisive than the two big films of 1939, Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. On the other hand, Stagecoach came out the same year and packaged a similar amount of social criticism into a much more enjoyable film. Of the two, I know which one I'd sooner watch again.
- The film had an interesting history, getting banned in France and nearly lost in the war.
