The Rules of the Game
Release and reception

The Rules of the Game premiered on Friday, July 7, 1939, at the Colisée Theatre in Paris to a full house and later at the Aubert Palace also in Paris. It was shown on a double bill with a patriotic documentary about French history. The audience at the screening consisted of members of the right-wing organisations, who booed after a while into the screening; Paulette Dubost said people at the screening fought, and one person tried to set fire to the theater. Renoir said he "depicted pleasant, sympathetic characters, but showed them in a society in the process of disintegration, so that they were defeated at the onset... the audience recognized this. The truth is that they recognized themselves. People who commit suicide do not care to do it in front of witnesses."

In France, film attendance was typically low in July; The Rules of the Game ended its run at the Colisée Theatre after three weeks because of poor attendance. It later was shown at the Aubert-Palace in Paris. Renoir said of the attendance "I was utterly dumbfounded when it became apparent that the film, which I wanted to be a pleasant one, rubbed most people the wrong way." Renoir initially wanted to screen the film at the 1939 World's Fair in New York City, but this idea was abandoned after the disastrous release in France.

Claude Gauteur surveyed reviews of The Rules of the Game published in Paris and said 12 were "unqualifiedly unfavorable", 13 were "favorable with reservations", and 10 were "favorable." Many reviews criticized the film for being "unpatriotic, frivolous and incomprehensible." One mixed review came from Nino Frank of Pour Vous, who called it "a copious work, even too much so, very complex and profoundly intelligent from one end to the other." Le Figaro called it a "bizarre spectacle" which was "one long succession of errors... a heavy-handed fantasy with wooly dialogue." In the 1943 edition of Histoire du cinéma, Robert Brasillach wrote that The Rules of the Game was among Renoir's most "jumbled" and "confused" films but applauded the biting satire, which he considered " Proustian." Brasillach also praised the technical variation employed by the director and said the film was an unrealized masterpiece. In the United States, a negative review from Variety said Renoir "attempts to crowd too many ideas into 80 minutes of film fare, resulting in confusion." According to François Truffaut, the film was very disconcerting to audiences at the time because of its peculiar atmosphere, which explains its commercial failure.

While the film received mostly unfavorable reviews, most critics praised the acting – including Renoir's, and only the far right-wing press criticized Marcel Dalio's performance. In July 1939 a right-wing French newspaper criticized the film for portraying the Jewish Marquis married to the Austrian Christine. The Union Sacrée, a French clerical fascist group, organized demonstrations wherever the film was screened. Renoir was a known pacifist and supporter of the Communist Party, which made him unpopular in the tense weeks before World War II began. Years later Renoir said "there was no question of contrivance; my enemies had nothing to do with its failure. At every session I attended I could feel the unanimous disapproval of the audience."

In the weeks that followed the premiere, Renoir reduced the film's running time from its original 113 minutes to 100 minutes, then to 90 minutes and finally to 85 minutes. He told Margurite Renoir and Zwoboda to cut the scenes that the audience had found the most upsetting. Renoir said he mostly cut his own scenes or dialogue "as though I were ashamed, after this rebuff, of showing myself on the screen." He later defended his own performance as being awkward – the way Octave should have been. The reduction in length removed Octave's complexity and completely changed the character's motives at the end of the film. In the 85-minute version, Octave does not intend to run away with Christine and merely lends André his coat for warmth before sending him out to the greenhouse. The omission of this item in the plot resulted in the misconception that the film has an alternative ending; this was first reported by Roger Manvell after he watched it at its London premiere in 1946. At one point, Jean Jay told Renoir to restore the film to the 100-minute version "to avoid commercial disaster", but none of the shorter versions improved its reception or attendance figures. When asked about the film's poor reception with audience members, Renoir said "I thought I was gentle with them, and they thought I was laughing at them."

In October 1939 The Rules of the Game officially was banned in France for being "depressing, morbid, immoral having an undesirable influence over the young." Other films that were similarly banned included Marcel Carné's Le Quai des brumes and Le Jour Se Lève. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated "we are especially anxious to avoid representations of our country, our traditions, and our race that changes its character, lie about it, and deform it through the prism of an artistic individual who is often original but not always sound." The Marriage of Figaro, one of the inspirations for the film, had been banned for similar reasons. After the end of World War II, the 85-minute version of the film was re-released in Paris on September 26, 1945, and it was banned again.

Renoir said that of all his films, The Rules of the Game was the biggest failure at the time of its release. He also said its failure "so depressed me that I resolved to either give up the cinema or to leave France." During shooting, Renoir was offered the chance to film an adaptation of Tosca by Italian producers; he agreed to the deal on July 14, 1939, and saw it as an opportunity to leave France. Renoir and Carl Koch traveled to Rome on August 10 for pre-production, but had to leave on August 23 after the German-Soviet pact made his French citizenship an issue. Koch directed the film instead and Renoir emigrated to Hollywood.
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