La Regle Du Jeu (The Rules Of The Game)

We said we'd rewatch Renoir's highly lauded 1939 farce, and we made the right decision. After the mild pleasure and initial confusion of first time viewing, we now recognize it as a masterpiece.
The anger is truly biting of the aristocrats, never more so than in the hunting scene. It is the small movements, the way the scenes are conjoined, that really illustrates the hypocrisy and the farce. As is the case when upstairs and the downstairs, which the direction indicates is in turn corrupted by their employers, come to meet each other.
A large part of the genius of this film though lies in the great humanisation, even verging on sympathy, Renoir shows for the characters he detests. Robert De La Chesnaye is at once a terrible snob and hypocrite, and has a rather childlike joy. Andre may fall into the same traps as the others, but he wishes to be better, wishes to be pure, before that fateful line 'It's one of the rules....'. Renoir does not let anyone be utterly kicked about, and he lets no one take the high ground, Schumacher being just an absurd idiot. The character of Octave is also a fascinating one, does he really sacrifice himself? Is he just playing along? The themes of artifice, acting, and truth rebound through this film.
We are never presented with them though, the film seamlessly (an overused word, that genuinely applies here) ties up the strands of all. The wonderful weightless camerawork that floats around, picks out the actors, moves as though swimming and breaking from scene to scene. The is divine storytelling.
A delight to re-watch, to be re-watched again. In the pleasure and the beauty of the direction, the infinite richocets of anger and sympathy, a terrific piece of art.