ILX All-Time Film and Morbsies Poll: RESULTS Thread for ILX's Favorite Movies, Films, Cinema, Flicks & Moving Pictures

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I like Taxi Driver and rate it highly but Bernard Herrmann's score over scenes of city lights reflected in puddles is the best thing about it

Herrmann, and DeNiro, and Foster...but I think I'd put Schrader at the top; so much of it seems to come out of a couple of hellish years he experienced in the early '70s.

(Add Michael Chapman, too.)

Your Lyft ride is arriving soon! Look for Travis in a grey Toyota Camry

*cancel ride*

https://cansesclasseled.files.wordpress.com/2021/11/007-the-rules-of-the-game.jpg

07. THE RULES OF THE GAME (Jean Renoir, 1939, France) [1,575.88 points; 17 votes]
S&S: 5 | TSPDT: 4 | BOXD: DNP

MORBS SEZ: ""

i had a hard time staying interested in the film until the last 40 minutes or so, which were fantastic. the rest of it i found kind of silly, really (and yes, i know there's a huge element of farce), and with a few very notable exceptions (renoir as octave, the chambermaid, christine's niece) i thought the acting was poor. the actress playing christine was especially awful - she's supposed to be beautiful, captivating, and alluring yet the reality is a woman who looks about 50 and has all the charisma of a wet noodle.
― lauren (laurenp), Thursday, November 16, 2006 12:15 PM

rules of the game sux, yes
― Dr. Alicia D. Titsovich (sexyDancer), Thursday, November 16, 2006 5:16 PM

The Rules of The Game is screwball?
― k/l (Ken L), Monday, September 5, 2005 10:12 PM

rules of the game >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> intolerable cruelty > rules of attraction >>>>>>> laws of attraction
― j blount (papa la bas), Tuesday, September 6, 2005 12:11 AM

i mean fuck any issues of "high" or "low" art, rules of the game is just the best film ever by any standards you'd care to name
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, September 6, 2005 12:57 AM

i can recall more than one convo where people were like "why bother with gosford park when there's already rules of the game" to much gnashing of teeth from this moi
― meryl streep post-brazilian (s1ocki), Sunday, January 10, 2010 12:13 PM

Very different tonally from ROTG; always with Altman you sense the sourness (not a bad thing).
― Hell is other people. In an ILE film forum. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, January 10, 2010 12:41 PM

yeah it's different, i just mean that there was one filmmaker in the 30s who was able (though no-one was able to see it in the end) to make a film with a similar theme and attitude. there were might even have been others -- iirc, hitchcock's 'the skin game' has a touch of it. (imo renoir had more teeth than people like to reckon now.)
― jive bunny and the masterilxers (history mayne), Sunday, January 10, 2010 12:46 PM

I saw Rules of the Game once and while I remember there being nothing wrong with it I don't quite get why it's always near the top of these things. Will definitely watch again someday. Grand Illusion had a bigger impact on me.
― Chris L, Friday, August 28, 2009 12:37 PM

I saw Rules of the Game a couple years ago. Good movie, but it didn't wow me or anything.
― Trewster Dare (jaymc), Thursday, August 2, 2012 11:27 AM

'the rules of the game' cannot share genre space with 'she's the one' or anything like that
― gear (gear), Monday, August 21, 2006 1:50 PM

I think if there's one consensus on this thread, it's that if you haven't seen Rules of the Game, do so immediately.
― or have I become completely absurd? (kenan), Friday, August 28, 2009 1:16 PM

I saw Rules of the Game once and while I remember there being nothing wrong with it I don't quite get why it's always near the top of these things. Will definitely watch again someday. Grand Illusion had a bigger impact on me.
― Chris L, Friday, August 28, 2009 12:37 PM

Yes, I don't know why this is THE Renoir. But maybe it will console me for the absence of Lubitsch and Ophuls.

LOL, accidentally posted before I could for sure confirm Morbs never really said anything about this one, but it does indeed appear that he never really posted a comment on it other than once saying he was about to rescreen it. He preferred La Chienne.

This was in my 25. Absolutely incredible film that deserves every single prop it receives

Actually, I know why this is THE Renoir--it's pretty in ways that are accessible to middlebrow moderns. Compare the Impressionists versus the "modern" schools of art that succeeded them.

it's mostly because it's funny, shocking, sad and it manages both its mise-en-scene and its pacing brilliantly

It's a French film from the 30s. Given how it's been so far I'd celebrate it tbh xp

La Chienne is great, and it was remade as one of my favourite Hollywood Fritz Lang films, Scarlet Street.

Good movie, except

the actress playing christine was especially awful

I probably prefer La Grande Illusion.

Rules of the Game is so incredible. I totally understand why it's given the status it has.

There's some funny-sad stuff about Renoir in that Tavernier doc on French cinema, a friend saying that he was the kind of guy who would get into a discussion claiming to be a communist and if his convo partner was a fascist he'd decide he's a fascist too by the end of it. Also, Jean Gabin: "Renoir as an artist - sublime. Renoir as a human being - less than zero".

Never heard anyone dis Renoir as a human being before.

The new availability of those sublime '30s films will hopefully skew submissions if we should do this again in 2031.

if his convo partner was a fascist he'd decide he's a fascist too by the end of it

Isn't there a well-known Renoir quote: "Everyone has their reasons"?

My #4. Part of the status is obviously its place in history, that it foreshadows what came immediately after. But I think most of it is the way Renoir sustains a tone throughout of comic revulsion. He doesn't exactly loathe the characters, but he sees them for what they are.

being a conversational sponge and demonstrating empathy in order to tease out further insight strikes me as a feature of a political artist rather than a bug

renoir was not a fascist

My students like it but wish it weren't in black and white or in French.

He supported the Popular Front!

Guys, the point of that anecdote obviously wasn't that Renoir was a committed fascist but that he was mercurial and somewhat superficial in his political beliefs. Which needn't mean anything at all about his films, it's just biographical trivia!

I do seem to remember the doc suggesting some slightly slippery stuff happening in that department before he fled to the US but will have to revisit to say anything more clear cut.

his pacifism probably landed him in trouble tbh

The bio published a few years ago is clear about his committed leftist though.

Leftist too

The Crime of Monsieur Lange is very left-wing.

Some days my favourite is A Day in the Country, but that's a smaller film.

kind of an inarguably sublime and monumental piece of art; made my top 25 though i did come close to swapping out for ...monsieur lange which i adore. watched the golden coach since voting and that might have made my ballot too, increasingly have stronger feelings for the more imperfect pieces of his work, where i guess traditional notions of narrative quality and 'seriousness' are just thrown out of the window, and he seems intent in on exploring every possibility of the frames potential.

1. 2001, 2. Vertigo, 3. Mulholland Drive, 4. Do the Right Thing + two more, no idea (not Zodiac, I'm sorry to say).

(Per KJB, I've named Mulholland Drive in full, just so no one thinks I mean Mulholland Falls.)

Sorry to break in on the Renoir talk; I have my own reasons.

clemenza needs to be taken to the zone

les regles du jeu is interesting, seminal and fun but i hardly ever think about it

Guys, the point of that anecdote obviously wasn't that Renoir was a committed fascist but that he was mercurial and somewhat superficial in his political beliefs. Which needn't mean anything at all about his films, it's just biographical trivia!

I think this story says a lot about people who are good at seeing people.

Damn, I keep forgetting Stalker--that's #5.

(Per KJB, I've named /Mulholland Drive/ in full, just so no one thinks I mean /Mulholland Falls/.)

XP I think you mean Cannonball Run...II

there's another ozu coming

^^^My favorite West Side Story number

No Country might not have made it?

You're all forgetting Gandhi.

Yeah, + Tokyo Story--those six.

What about JFK???

Thank you for not being LAZY, clemenza! :) xoxoxo

(xpost) That would be funny. Followed by 100 posts quoting it.

Gandhi is less infuriating than No Country for Adults.

Mulholland Dr. is the movie. MullHolland Drive is a popular YouTube series with Martin Mull and Tom Holland driving around picking up mystery guests who sit in the backseat with a bag over their head and Martin and Tom have to play 20 questions to guess who it is. Much of the humor comes from their age difference, with Holland never knowing who anyone born before 1980 is, and Mull the reverse.