Description

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.

Special Features

New 4K restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack

One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and 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