The Rules of the Game · reception & legacy
1939 · Jean Renoir
How The Rules of the Game has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Booed at its 1939 Paris premiere, hacked down by distributors and then banned by the wartime French government, it was reconstructed in 1959 and promptly climbed to the very top of the canon — a fixture of Sight & Sound's top ten ever since.
What's debated
The eternal 'is it actually the greatest film ever?' test case: first-timers often shrug at what looks like a frothy country-house comedy, while devotees insist it only reveals itself on rewatch.
Its footprint
'The awful thing about life is this: everyone has their reasons' is one of the most quoted lines in cinema, and the country-estate-upstairs-downstairs template it perfected echoes everywhere — Robert Altman openly modelled Gosford Park on it.
Where it stands
A permanent top-five-of-all-time citizen — the ultimate 'you can't call yourself a cinephile until you've seen it' film.