Renoir’s Spell – Sight & Sound Magazine

Cameron Crowe on La Règle du jeu

I’d just written and directed a movie called Say Anything and I next wanted to tell a story with an ensemble cast. I’ve always loved that kind of film. I mentioned this to a writer friend of mine who instantly said, ‘Well, you’ve got to see La Règle du jeu again.’

I casually told him I’d never seen it. With the fevered devotion of a diehard fan, he instructed me: ‘See it now. See it tonight. It’s the world-class standard for ensemble films.’ Then came his promise: ‘It will change your life.’

Like a bad comic who promises ‘you’re gonna love this joke’, advance praise like this is almost always a harbinger of crushing disappointment. But dutifully I found the film – and it promptly changed my life. It was as if I’d been waiting for ever for a movie like it.

What I like most about films is when they cast a spell over you, taking you into another world and introducing you to a group of characters whom you get to know over the course of a couple of hours. La Règle du jeu is a perfect example: it’s so rich in detail you get lost in it almost instantly; it slips you into the lives of its characters. There’s a game I play where I watch a character who is seemingly uninvolved in a particular scene. In most movies you see these kinds of incidental figures waiting around for their lines; here the actors are all completely in character, every little twitch matters and it’s all there if you look for it. And the film is so well photographed.

The movie always surprises you with how funny it is. One of the truly great moments is when some of the characters are performing on stage, things around them are erupting in chaos and somebody says ‘Stop the farce’, to which another says ‘Which one?’ You’re kept guessing what is a performance and what isn’t.

I imagine that the actors operated like a troupe, improvising together, and on top of all the attention he paid to his characters Renoir also had the time to stage the action so well. It’s almost like a ballet.

I love the opening scene where André arrives at Le Bourget airport having just completed a record trans-atlantic flight to impress Christine, the marchioness whom so many in the film fall in love with. It’s so funny – almost Wilder- esque – because you expect the magnificent entry of a hero but instead the guy is a weak wreck.

And I can never get enough of Octave, the sad sack centre of the story, beautifully played by Renoir himself. Octave is my favourite type of character – the weary anti-hero with the weight of the world on his shoulders. It’s always hard for me to take my eyes off Renoir because he carries the pain of the movie throughout, and yet still finds joy in his often ridiculous friends.

It’s surprising he cast Nora Gregor as Christine: she’s probably the least technically beautiful woman in the film. She seems so sad, like she hasn’t slept in weeks, but then you realise she’s racked with pain and indecision and it is the depth of this conflict that prompts men to fall deeply in love with her.

Lisette, Christine’s maid, is a wonderful character too. Paulette Dubost, who plays her, is still alive, and made a movie a couple of years ago. Her character is the brightest light of all the women in the story. It is Christine whom the story spins around, but every time I see the film Lisette almost steals the movie.

With movies that accomplish as much as La Règle du jeu, you tend to feel a lot of huffing and puffing from the writer and director. This movie, though, seems effortless, never impressed with itself. Because its observations about human behaviour are so true it could have been made yesterday. I wish it had been made yesterday because I’d love to go to the movies this weekend and see something as deft, as ambitious, and new.

I’ve seen La Règle du jeu about 100 times – it drives my wife crazy, though she loves the movie too. I actually took frame stills from the title sequence and tacked them to the wall next to where I write. Putting them up there reminds me of the simplicity and depth of Renoir’s storytelling.

So next time a friend tells you to seek out a film because ‘it’ll change your life’… don’t roll your eyes too quickly. Their passion might be right on target or horribly misguided… but then, that’s just one of the many themes packed into La Règle du jeu.

CROWE’S TOP 10

The Apartment Wilder

La Règle du jeu Renoir

La Dolce vita Fellini

Manhattan Allen

The Best Years of Our Lives Wyler

To Kill a Mockingbird Mulligan

Harold and Maude Ashby

Pulp Fiction Tarantino

Quadrophenia Roddam

Ninotchka Lubitsch

Courtesy of Sight & Sound – Cameron Crowe –  September, 2002