La Regle du Jeu (1939)
#51 in my 2007 movie challenge is Jean Renoir’s La Regle du Jeu, an aptly great film for hitting the big five-oh so early in the year. I saw the newly restored 35mm print, which will be shown later this summer in Vancouver, Ft. Worth and more. If you have the opportunity to go see this film’s restored print, do so. How good is the print? I could see exactly how frizzy the wife’s perm was, the shadow of a mustache above the mistress’s lip, and where the husband’s eyebrows had been redrawn.
In addition to the high quality of the print, it’s a great film. Like Citizen Kane, with which it’s often compared, it’s amazing both for the story and its technical proficiency. Like Renoir’s earlier Grand Illusion, it has a startling prescience for the coming war. Altman was a fan, and its influence is apparent in the ensemble casts of all his films, but most obviously in the upstairs/downstairs manor house of Gosford Park.