La Regle du Jeu

I think this is one of the truly great films - definitely in my top 20. It starts like documentary - bang up to date (1939)- with newsreel of an airman landing in a media circus after a solo transatlantic flight. He did it, he says, for a woman.

Somebody's wife, actually. The drama then regresses through layer after layer of French society until you could be back in pre-Revolutionary times with a tragedy of almost Greek coldness and inevitability. The character fall in and out of "love" like automatons. Poacher, gamekeeper, maid or aristocrat, it doesn't seem to matter. Could this be democracy? No, they're simply bored out of their skulls.

Virtually the only likeable character, the only one with any human decency or warmth, is Octave who is played by Renoir himself. His camera swoops pitilessly round the gilded chambers and corridors, catching every little act of nastiness and betrayal. To begin with you wonder whether this is simply a French Gosford Park; soon you realise that this is actually one of the most angry political films ever made. No wonder it was banned by the Nazi occupiers. It couldn't be less like the warm nostalgia of Renoir pere - this film can't wait for the Revolution. Unfortunately, it realises, the new regime won't be any better.

The short is also worth watching for its insight into Renoir's technique, though the actual commentary is a model of French academic pretentiousness.