Plot Synopsis:
Considered one of the greatest films ever made, Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game is a scathing critique of corrupt French society cloaked in a comedy of manners in which a weekend at a marquis’s country château lays bare some ugly truths about a group of haut bourgeois acquaintances. The film has had a tumultuous history: it was subjected to cuts after the violent response of the audience at its 1939 premiere, and the original negative was destroyed during World War II; it wasn’t reconstructed until 1959. That version, which has stunned viewers for decades, is presented here.
- New 4K restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray of the film with special features
- Introduction to the film by director Jean Renoir
- Audio commentary written by film scholar Alexander Sesonske and read by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich
- Comparison of the film’s two endings
- Selected-scene analysis by Renoir historian Chris Faulkner
- Excerpts from a 1966 French television program by filmmaker Jacques Rivette
- Part one of Jean Renoir, a two-part 1993 documentary by film critic David Thompson
- Video essay about the film’s production, release, and 1959 reconstruction
- Interview with film critic Olivier Curchod
- Interview from a 1965 episode of the French television series Les écrans de la ville with Jean Gaborit and Jacques Durand
- Interviews with set designer Max Douy; Renoir’s son, Alain; and actor Mila Parély
- PLUS: An essay by Sesonske; writings by Jean Renoir, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bertrand Tavernier, and François Truffaut; and tributes to the film by J. Hoberman, Kent Jones, Paul Schrader, Wim Wenders, Robert Altman, and others
New cover by Raphael Geroni
