Background and writing In 1938 the French film industry was booming, and Renoir was at the height of his career. He had had three consecutive hit films and
La Grande Illusion had won awards from the
New York Film Critics, the
National Board of Review and the
Venice Film Festival. The financial success of
La Bête Humaine made it easy for Renoir to secure enough financial backing to form his own production company. In 1938 he founded Nouvelle Édition Française (NEF) with his brother
Pierre Renoir, together with André Zwoboda, Oliver Billiou and Camille François. All five invested 10,000 francs into the company and intended to produce two films per year. The company was modeled after the American film production company
United Artists, which was formed in 1919 as a film distribution company for independent artists by
Charlie Chaplin,
Douglas Fairbanks,
D.W. Griffith and
Mary Pickford. Renoir rallied his friends in the film industry around the company and got financial support from
René Clair,
Julien Duvivier,
Jean Gabin and
Simone Simon. NEF's headquarters on the Rue la Grange-Batelière was sublet from
Marcel Pagnol's production company. On 8 December 1938
Georges Cravenne published a press release in
Paris-Soir announcing that Renoir and Pagnol were about to sign an agreement to procure a large theatre where they would publicly screen "the films that they would direct from then on".
The Rules of the Game was the only film produced by the company. In May 1938, Renoir completed the historical drama
La Marseillaise and wanted to make a comedy. He was anxious about the
Munich Agreement and the strong possibility of another world war, and wanted to film a "happy dream" to subdue his pessimism. He wrote a synopsis for a film titled ''Les Millions d'Arlequin
, which had characters similar to those in The Rules of the Game''. When conceiving the film, Renoir was inspired by classical French art, such as the works of
Pierre de Marivaux,
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais and especially
Alfred de Musset's play
Les Caprices de Marianne, which Renoir initially intended to adapt; NEF first announced the film as an adaptation of it. Renoir later said he never intended to directly adapt
Les Caprices de Marianne but only to re-read it and other classics of French literature for inspiration. After returning from lecturing in London in January 1939, Renoir left Paris to work on a script. He told a reporter that his next film would be "A precise description of the bourgeois of our age." Renoir,
Carl Koch and Zwoboda went to
Marlotte to work on the script. Because Renoir wanted to allow the actors to improvise their dialogue, only one-third of the film was scripted and the rest was a detailed outline. Renoir later said that his "ambition when I made the film was to illustrate this remark: we are dancing on a volcano". Renoir called the film a "
divertissement" for its use of
baroque music and aspects of classical French comedies. Renoir's initial inspiration by
Les Caprices de Marianne led to the film's four main characters correlating with those of the play; a virtuous wife, a jealous husband, a despairing lover and an interceding friend. In both the play and the film the interceding friend is named Octave. Octave is also the only one of the four characters inspired by the play that shares traits with its counterpart. In both works, Octave is a "sad clown" full of self-doubt and self-pity. The characters' names constantly changed between versions of the script; Renoir said that in an early draft, André Jurieux was an orchestra conductor rather than an aviator.
Casting in 1932. Renoir re-wrote the character Christine for the Austrian actress and reportedly fell in love with her during pre-production. Renoir originally wanted the entire cast of
La bête humaineincluding
Fernand Ledoux, Simone Simon, Jean Gabin and Julien Carettefor the film. Gabin was offered the role of André but rejected it and accepted a role in
Marcel Carné's
Le jour se lève instead. He was replaced by Roland Toutain. Simon was offered the role of Christine but wanted 800,000 francs, which was a third of the film's entire budget. Simon's salary request was vetoed by NEF administrator Camille François. Ledoux was offered the role of Schumacher. He was married to Simon at the time; he declined when her salary request was denied and instead took a role in
Maurice Tourneur's
Volpone. He was replaced by Gaston Modot.
Claude Dauphin was offered the role of the Marquis de la Chesnaye; he refused it and instead acted with Simon in
Raymond Bernard's ''
Cavalcade d'amour''. Renoir then cast Marcel Dalio as the Marquis. Years later, Dalio asked Renoir why he had been cast after having typically played
burlesque or traitorous roles. Renoir told Dalio that he was the opposite of the cliché of what a Marquis was and that Dalio was the only actor he knew that could portray the character's insecurity. Renoir's brother
Pierre was cast as Octave, and Carette was cast as Marceau. François suggested newly famous stage actress Michele Alfa for the role of Christine, and Renoir went with his
common-law wife Marguerite and Zwoboda to see her perform in a play. While at the play Renoir noticed Nora Gregor in a box seat in the audience and asked about her during the intermission. He learned that Gregor was the wife of
Prince Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg, an Austrian nobleman. Renoir became friends with Gregor and her husband, getting to know them over several dinners in Paris. Starhemberg was forced to resign his leadership role in the
Heimwehra paramilitary anti-democratic organizationbecause Gregor was Jewish and he was anti-fascist. When Germany
annexed Austria in March 1938 Gregor and Starhemberg fled to France. Renoir said they were "in a state of great disarray. Everything they believed in was collapsing." Gregor was an actress from the Viennese
Burgtheater and had appeared in some films, including
Carl Theodor Dreyer's
Michael. Gregor's first husband had been the concert pianist
Mitja Nikisch, son of the renowned conductor
Arthur Nikisch of the
Leipzig Opera and according to film theorist Charles Drazin, a possible inspiration for some characteristics of Octave. Despite objections from his NEF colleagues, Renoir hired Gregor for the role of Christine. She was older than the original character, and he made changes to the character based on Gregor's personality and on their dinner conversations, such as making Christine the daughter of an Austrian conductor. Many of Renoir's friends believed he fell in love with Gregor shortly after casting her. Zwoboda said Gregor had "that which Renoir loved above all; an incontestable class, a style, the gestures and bearing of a great distinction". Renoir said he cast Gregor because of her Austrian accent, which he believed would create "a little barrier ... between her and her surroundings" and because of her appearance, which he considered "birdlike" and "sincere". Renoir finished casting the remaining roles by late January 1939. When asked who the main character of the film was, Renoir answered: "There isn't any! My conception at the beginningand at the endwas to make a ''film d'ensemble'', a film representing a society, a group of persons, almost a whole class, and not a film of personal affairs."
Filming Filming for exterior scenes set in the country began on 15 February 1939, in Sologne and outside the Chateau de
la Ferté-Saint-Aubin. Renoir later said he chose Sologne because his father
Pierre-Auguste Renoir "regretted that he had never been able to paint [it]. How well I understand the sincerity of those regrets before these beautiful landscapes of Sologne, in astonishing colors, of a grace so melancholy yet so gentle." Renoir said Sologne's mist "took me back to the happy days of my childhood." The cast and crew arrived in Sologne between 6 and 15 February. Renoir's son Alain worked as an assistant camera operator and Dido Freire worked as the script girl. Renoir's assistants on the film were Koch, Zwoboda and
Henri Cartier-Bresson. Tony Corteggiani was hired as a technical advisor for the rabbit hunting sequence. The cast and crew stayed at Hotel Rat in
Lamotte-Beuvron. Heavy rainfall prevented the start of shooting in Sologne for several weeks and Renoir rewrote parts of the script to accommodate the rain. While he finished the script the entire company played cards and bonded; they described it as a happy time in their lives just before the horrors of
World War II began. Paulette Dubost said shooting the film was great fun. The delays caused Pierre Renoir to pull out of the film because of prior commitments to stage plays in Paris. Renoir then asked
Michel Simon to play Octave but Simon was busy with other projects. Renoir finally cast himself, later saying that he "was just waiting for the moment when Pierre would say 'Why don't you play the role yourself, Jean?' He didn't have to ask me twice." He added that after having gained experience and confidence as a director his "most stubborn dream has been to be an actor." Renoir rewrote the role of Octave to better suit himself since he and Pierre were physically and personally very different. To raise additional funding for the over-running production, Zwoboda had used the success of
La Bête Humaine to sell advanced screening rights in large theatres to Jean Jay, the director of the
Gaumont Film Company. When shooting in Sologne finally began progress was slow because of the constant improvisations of the actorswhich Renoir encouragedand Gregor's struggles with her role. Jay visited the set and was unhappy with the slow progress and with Renoir's performance. The cast and crew however admired Renoir and enjoyed the carefree atmosphere on set, forgetting about the impending political situation. The cast's improvisations caused some changes from the original script. Christine was initially written as a bored, upper class bourgeois whose main preoccupation was planning parties, but Renoir amended this to accommodate Gregor's acting. Renoir also cut most of the references to Christine's conductor father Stiller, such as his relationship with the Marquis. The Marquis was initially written as a patron of the arts and music instead of a collector of music boxes. Journalists often visited the set and wrote positively about the production. When directing himself, Renoir arranged the performers movements first then acted in the scenes. Filming on the sets in Joinville continued at a slow pace. Renoir would often film fifteen to twenty takes of individual shots and change dialogue on the set, making previous takes useless. Film historian Joel Finler said the film "truly
evolved" during its making, as Renoir worked on writing and rewriting the script, balancing and rebalancing the characters and relationships, plots and subplots." Cartier-Bresson said the improvisation during filming was like a jam session; both cast and crew members were encouraged to suggest ideas and dialogue would often change on the morning of the shoot. During filming, Renoir became disappointed by Gregor's performance. He began to cut her scenes and add new scenes for Paulette Dubost and Mila Parély. Film historian
Gerald Mast found Gregor's performance to be "as haunting and bewitching as a plastic giraffe." During production, Jay told Renoir he hated his performance as Octave. Renoir offered to replace himself with Michel Simon, but Jay refused because two-thirds of the film had already been shot. Jay asked Renoir to instead remove Octave's scenes, which had not yet been shot. Renoir refused, and throughout shooting he added new scenes for Octave. Shooting in Joinville finally wrapped in May 1939; the film was over schedule and the rented soundstage was needed for other films. Renoir originally wanted to release the film in June because the potential war would make a post-summer release impossible. Renoir continued shooting additional scenes with some of the actors. The opening scene at the airfield was shot in mid-June at the
Bourget Airport in the middle of the night with whatever extras they could find. Renoir almost ran out of money when he filmed the car crash scene, which was shot very quickly with Alain Renoir as the camera operator. Renoir never liked the scene and initially removed it. The principal photography was nine and a half weeks over schedule when it finally wrapped in June. Despite beginning the shoot in love with Gregor, Renoir's infatuation remained unrequited. During the film's production, he ended his relationship with Marguerite and began another with script girl Dido Freire, whom he had known for 12 years and was Alain Renoir's nanny. Eventually Dido married Renoir. == Release ==