The Rules of the Game

The Rules of the Game (1939)
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031885/]

The Gist:
This is my first Renoir film and having not seen any more of his work I have a difficult time saying if The Rules of the Game is a good deal like Robert Altman films or if Altman films are a good deal like Renoir films. Never-the-less, this film balances a large cast who all struggle with the enervating and at times superfluous nature of love. Often, the way characters interact with each other are desperate and pleading and occasionally vapid but are always entertaining in a helter skelter sort of fashion. The camera picks up long winding one takes that flow from one character to the other and the depth often picks up multiple planes of action. All that being said, the relationships in this film are pretty hollow (although great intense burning love and affection are often purported by the characters). However, if you juxtapose that with the cruelty of the noblesse hunt that takes place in the film, the obliteration of the rabbits and game hen that inhabit the forest all to satisfy a bored over privelaged upper class...well then you can extend the tepid relationships and philandering as another symptom of the ennui of the rich, which is in its own way sort of tragic.