Rating: 
Summary: Great movie, great DVD, great company
Review: Great movie, great DVD. The reason it's expensive is because Criterion has to license the films they distribute and also because they put out some lesser known titles (compared to this relatively well known film, that is), thus the added cost. You really do get your money's worth and support a great company.
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Summary: Wildly Mixed Reviews=?
Review: Harold Bloom seems to think Richard III is kind of a so-so play and one Amazon reviewer considers Benvenuto Cellini, by Hector Berlioz, to be a lousy opera. Jacques Barzun--a pretty intelligent guy--runs with the idea that Shakespeare and Berlioz were a heck of a lot smarter than any of us and sometimes a work of art is so amazing none of us can get our heads fully around it. The secret word here is "humility." Signs (sometimes)of genuine greatness: a group of people loves a thing passionately but can't fully explain why and another group finds the same thing overrated or boring. As with works of Berlioz and Shakespeare, this film will probably continue to generate mixed reviews several hundred years from now, when a lot of other "classics" are tired or forgotten. My opinion is it's a masterpiece and I can't fully tell you why either. Buy it, watch it, and if you don't like it put it up for sale and invest the profits in "Run, Lola, Run" or "The Lord of the Rings"--films whose merits can be readily explained. That way another film buff, a little short on dough perhaps, will be able to appreciate "The Rules of the Game."
Rating: 
Summary: As Substantive as Air: Utterly Lacking in Significance
Review: Here it is, in all its Criterion Collection Glory: La Regle du Jou, considered by critics worldwide as one of the greatest movies ever! Don't hold your breath, but this film is probably one of the most overrated in the history of cinema (along with Sunrise, Metropolis, or anything by Ron Howard). I challenge you to read all the glowing five star reviews and tell me what exactly it is that people like about this movie. Glowing generalities are usually a sign of people who are just mouthing what they were told to think. At least Renoir's Grand Illusion was mildly entertaining, this film doesn't even have that going for it. The funniest thing here is in the special features when a pompous Renoir blabbers on endlessly about how important this film was... he reminded me of Nigel from Spinal Tap.Regarding the Criterion DVD, its good to see they are finally lowering their prices a bit, although its still not enough to make up for all the bad energy from their past rate hijackings. And the Criterion tradition is maintained here of very poor subtitle options (English only), which limits my ability to experience this film with foreign friends... I mean, really, how much would they have to spend to add Spanish subtitles on these discs? Isn't that the least they could do at these prices?
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Summary: Now I know why...
Review: I had no idea what to expect before watching this film. I purposefully kept myself ignorant of it because I wanted to experience it as fresh as possible. All I knew was that, for years, it has consistently placed second on the Sight & Sound polls of the greatest films of all time (Citizen Kane always comes in first). Now, knowing that a film is considered one of the greatest of all time sometimes means that you are in for a snore. There are some so-called "classics" that just bore me to tears (The Conformist or L'Aventura spring to mind). Yes, this is one of the greatest movies ever made. Yes, it is a satire on aristocratic society at the time. Yes, it was badly received and banned by the Nazis. Blah, blah, blah - who cares? The amazing thing is what a joy this movie is to watch. It is genuinely funny. I often hear it cited as the main influence on Robert Altman, and now I can understand why. Instead of criticizing Paul Thomas Anderson for copying Altman, we should appreciate Altman imitating Renoir. Here we see the big cast without any real central character, the anarchic humor, and the brisk energy that moves everything along. Like everything in the Criterion Collection, this print LOOKS VERY GOOD. This is all the more important since the original negative had been destroyed in World War II and for years only second-rate prints were available. There is a second disc that documents all the travails that this film went through, and how it was edited to several different versions. The version we have now was restored in the fifties outside (but with the blessing of) Renoir. This print is 98 minutes long. The original was 91 minutes, and we are still missing an unimportant scene from that original version. I would have liked to have had a new documentary with more commentary from contemporary filmmakers (especially Altman who admits that he learned "the rules of the game from The Rules of the Game"). However, there is a voice-over commentary track by Peter Bogdonavich, who is as good a film scholar as they come.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best French films
Review: I have a degree in French and have seen many French films--and this is the best of the ones I have seen. Besides having a plot that is followable (which many foreign films lack) it is insightful, interesting, well acted, and and an overall enjoyable movie--whether you merely want entertainment or are using it for information about the French culture.
Rating: 
Summary: Although a classic, it did not entirely appeal to me
Review: I saw this in a film class, and I know I'll be lynched for this, but I found it pretty draggy. There were some terrific scenes, and I think the cinematography was some of the best I'd ever seen (especially the dinner party scenes and how they flowed from one couple to the next so smoothly in was seemed like one take), I think this could have used a harsher edit. I can see how it is a classic, but scenes such as the rabbit hunting scene could have been trimmed down a bit. Perhaps I'm being too critical. Again, I was awed by the filming, but not by the movie itself.
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Summary: Pure Heaven
Review: I've been watching this movie intermittently for 30 years since I was first introduced to it in a film class at college. Seeing it in Criterion's spectacular transfer is falling in love again with this landmark of 20th century art. What was once squinting at a blurry reproduction is now a riveting experience in time travel, taking me back to what it must have been like to see it first run in 1939. The only thing that's missing are riots in theater, but I can do without that in my living room. As for the film itself, what's really striking is that what is one level a formalistic imitation of classical French drama interbreeds with some kind of prophetic documentary of sick souls and a sick society. Remember that in 1939, war was in the cards but nobody new if it would be a passing crisis or gateway to a new dark ages. Renoir didn't just stare into the abyss, he climbed down for a better look. It's a cliche to say that they don't make 'em like that any more. But here I'm torn between regret that such a thing is no longer possible and relief that it's no longer necessary.
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Summary: The exquisite decline and fall of Old World Europe...
Review: Jean Renoir's THE RULES OF THE GAME takes place on the eve of World War II at an aristocratic house party in an opulent chateau just outside of Paris where the overlapping 'affaires d'amour' of all social classes are observed with a keen and compassionate eye. Renoir looks to the eighteenth-century world of Commedia dell'Arte and Mozartian opera, and seamlessly integrates farce with tragedy, using a classical form to offer his audience a profound and multifaceted parable on the disturbing realities that underlie the veneer of contemporary French society. It is the middle-class aviator, André Jurieu (Roland Toutain), who embodies the film's central conflict between the private passions and a sense of obligation to a larger social body. Right at the outset of the film, he violates the unwritten "rules" of social propriety by declaring to a radio reporter his disappointment that the woman he had been courting, Christine de la Chesnaye (Nora Grégor), is not present at his reception after completing a record-breaking flight across the Atlantic. His skill with the advanced technology of aircraft is not matched by an ability to deal with people, particularly in matters of love. Indeed, André's careless and unmediated show of desire for a highborn lady not only transgresses the received law of proper social conduct but of traditional class distinctions as well. Other characters also entertain desires that come into conflict with the social order. The Marquis, Robert de la Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio), is having a fling with Geneviève de Marrast (Mila Parély) behind Christine's back, and Geneviève is sincerely attached to him and wants for them to go away together yet he maintains the proper outward appearance, and out of politeness and consideration for his wife's feelings, keeps up the charade that their affair is a secret in spite of the fact that "everybody knows." Christine observes her husband's liaison with strange amusement, commenting that they look "very interesting" together - for her adultery is a form of entertaining spectacle. But even Robert loses his cool at one point when he discovers Christine and André together in the gunroom and punches the aviator in the face. Strangely enough, it is only the classless Pandarus-figure, Octave, who can get through to the serenely unattainable Christine because he seems to have no particular desires of his own; he only concerns himself with regulating the desires of others. Octave confesses that, like Marcello Mastrioanni in Fellini's LA DOLCE VITA, he is "a failure" who merely pleases his friends so that he may live off their wealth like "a parasite." Apparently, Christine loves him for his understanding that everything in life, every social relationship, is really a lie of some sort, and that all desire and romantic fantasy is, at bottom, a blind form of narcissistic self-deception. It seems that the two of them have come to understand the law that underpins desire - "La Règle de Jeu" - all too well. As Pauline Kael has pointed out, Renoir may have conceived Robert de la Chesnaye as a composite of two different characters in GRAND ILLUSION: Marcel Dalio's rich young mercantile Jew, Rosenthal, and the generous, self-sacrificing French nobleman, De Boeldieu, played by Pierre Fresnay. Here, the director appears to equate the waning aristocracy of Old World Europe with the imminent fate of the European Jewish community in the wake of rising nationalism, militarism, and xenophobia. When a chef makes an anti-Semitic slight against the Robert, revealing the bigotry of the French working classes, it evokes the controversy surrounding the Dreyfus Affair. By the same token, the General's final comment that Robert is one of a "dying breed" not only heralds the decay of aristocratic privilege but, from the vantage point of hindsight, also seems a chilling spectre of Nazi racialist ideology and the Final Solution. Christine's Austrian origin alludes to the looming war with Germany and seems a prediction of France's collaboration under the Vichy régime. Likewise, the reference to Schumacher's home of Alsace-Lorraine, the highly contested land ceded to the Germans at the end of the Franco-Prussian war in 1871 and then returned to France with the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, highlights an old geopolitical conflict between the two countries. The indiscriminate destruction of life in the rabbit and pheasant hunt sequence forecasts the waste and destruction of the war to come. Renoir's approach to mise-en-scène is especially groundbreaking. He employs seamless cutting as well as long continuous takes and tracking shots which follow the characters as they move from one space to the next in a manner that anticipates the graceful circling, panning, sensuously kinetic camera of Welles, Ophüls, Godard, Resnais, Bertolucci and others. He uses deep-focus compositions, avoiding close-ups by putting many actors in the frame at the same time to suggest multiple viewpoints. The balustrades of La Colinière and the languorous tracking shots down the long corridors undoubtedly inspired those in LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD while the checkered floor suggests a harlequinade and a chess board upon which the characters maneuver themselves in relation to each other - like the similarly checkered shuffleboard floor in Antonioni's LA NOTTE or the geometrically precise arrangement of the garden in MARIENBAD. (Interestingly enough, Coco Chanel designed the costumes for both THE RULES OF THE GAME and LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD). Octave's gorilla suit at the party implies a regression of human behavior to a more primitive state, setting up a conflict between barbarism and civilized life, between the savage realities of human desire and the law of the social contract that contains them as theatrical spectacle. The Shakespearean convention of "the play within the play" appears - just as it does in THE GOLDEN COACH - in various forms throughout the film, the most ominous being the 'danse macabre,' echoed in the séance and ritual journey to the realm of the dead in LA DOLCE VITA, suggesting that Renoir's superficial 'affaires d'amour' are really a dance of death heralding the apocalyptic destruction of the old Europe.
Rating:
Summary: One of the greatest movie ever. Hardly.
Review: Let's see. We have an aldulterer, a cheat, a liar, a slut & a guy with anger management issues. They all exist in this ultra chic, super rich sub-culture. If such a time (the 30's) & place ever existed it is easy to see why the French lost to the Germans, one year after this movie was actually made.
It is of course a satire & a pretty good one at that. The host, of a weekend hunting party has a mistress. He is afraid his wife is going have an affair with the another guest a hero flyer a la Charles Lindberg. But she has other admirers as well. My favorite character is the slut, the maid whose new husband take exception to her behavior. The whole mess is overseen by Jean Renoir, the director, who is also a major player in the movie itself. Eventually there is a murder. I won't tell who is murdered or who the murderer is here. On the dvd there is an alternate ending. A shorter version of the last scenes came out in 1959. This imparts a totally different context from the original which was banned in 1939. It is well done & gives different meanings to the motives of all involved. The major drawback is it is in French with English subtitles. But you'd want to pay strict attention to this one in any case.
Rating:
Summary: ART
Review: My god! I saw this film in 1974, and I was entirely transfixed. I saw this film recently and realized that great art improves with age. Let it suffice to say that Renoir's use of deep focus to express the interplay and complexity of everyday life is remarkable.
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