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Rules of the Game

Directed by Jean Renoir

France • 1939 • 106 mins. • In French

Showtimes & Past Screenings

Although it was met with diverse responses when it was released, few films have earned such universal critical acclaim as Renoir’s masterpiece. The “game” is life: Renoir and cinematographer Henri Cartier-Bresson paint a broad canvas, taking as their subject the foibles of bourgeois French society. At a weekend hunting party on the eve of World War II, amorous escapades abound among the aristocratic guests and the servants in a Gallic “Upstairs, Downstairs.” The refusal of one guest to play by society’s rules sparks a chain of events that ends in tragedy, providing, in Renoir’s words, a “dramatic fantasy” of a “a rich, complex society. . . dancing on a volcano.”

Genres: Drama

Appears in: 2017 on Celluloid, Classic French Cinema

The Northwest Film Center recognizes and honors the Indigenous peoples of this region on whose ancestral lands the museum now stands. These include the Willamette Tumwater, Clackamas, Kathlemet, Molalla, Multnomah and Watlala Chinook Peoples and the Tualatin Kalapuya who today are part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and many other Native communities who made their homes along the Columbia River. We also want to recognize that Portland today is a community of many diverse Native peoples who continue to live and work here. We respectfully acknowledge and honor all Indigenous communities—past, present, future—and are grateful for their ongoing and vibrant presence.