Considered one of the greatest films ever made, The Rules of the Game (La
règle du jeu), by Jean Renoir (Grand Illusion), is a scathing critique of
corrupt French society cloaked in a comedy of manners, in which a weekend at a
marquis’s countryside chateau lays bare some ugly truths about a group of
haute bourgeois acquaintances. The film was a victim of tumultuous history—it
was subjected to cuts after premiere audiences rejected it in 1939, 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.