The Rules of the Game (1950)

Whenever I write up a movie, I delete it from my list of "to see" films. Every Oscar-nominated movie from the major categories is on that list and it's largely the reason I watch things I'd otherwise not bother with (e.g. One Night of Love). So I went to my list to mark off this one and couldn't find it. I searched under its French name, "Le Regle du jeu," and still didn't see it. I'm kinda miffed that this somehow wound up in my DVD player when I didn't have to see it. Who the heck stuck it in my Netflix queue?? Grr.

Oh well. I watched it, so I might as well type about this weird partner-swapping movie.

There's a world-famous pilot who's been having an affair with a flirty married woman whose husband has been getting it on with yet another woman. There's a good-guy best friend of the flirty one who secretly pines for her and a silly little subplot about a married maid and manservant who work on different estates which is fine with the wife (who likes her work more than her man) but not so fine with the hubby. Everyone gets together for several days in the country for some hunting and sexual exploits. It's all very urbane but not nearly as entertaining as one would expect.

The DVD extras are full of breathless "the original version has been lost -- thank goodness we were able to restore at least one version!"-type stuff, which was more interesting to me than the actual film was. I'm actually surprised anyone cared enough to work on piecing this back together and describing what's missing...maybe I'm just not worldly enough to grasp the meaning in all of the goings-on? (And just a note -- the movie was first released in 1939, but didn't make it to the states until 1950.)

C+