Directed by Jean Renoir • 1939 • France
Considered one of the greatest films ever made, The Rules of the Game (La règle du jeu), by Jean Renoir, is a scathing critique of corrupt French society cloaked in a comedy of manners in which a weekend at a marquis' 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 premiere audience 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.
Up Next in Season 1
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Remorques
Directed by Jean Grémillon • 1941 • France
Starring Jean Gabin, Madeleine Renaud, Michèle MorganPoet Jacques Prévert cowrote this atmospheric tale of the romantic trials of a tugboat captain, played by the iconic French star Jean Gabin. For André (Gabin) and the other members of the Cyclone’s c...
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Lumière d’été
Directed by Jean Grémillon • 1943 • France
A shimmering glass hotel at the top of a remote Provençal mountain provides the setting for a tragicomic tapestry about an obsessive love pentangle, whose principals range from an artist to a hotel manager to a dam worker. Scripted by Jacques Prévert an...
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The Eternal Return
Directed by Jean Delannoy • 1943 • France
Starring Jean Marais, Madeleine Sologne, Jean MuratJean Cocteau—who wrote the script in his typical blend of the dreamlike and the mythic—and director Jean Delannoy transpose the immortal tale of Tristan and Isolde to 1940s France in this rhapsodic roma...
