In his tribute included in the stunning DVD box set “Essential Art House Cinema: 50 Years of Janus Films,” director Martin Scorsese celebrates the significance of the famed distributor by reflecting on what the Janus logo meant to a young man sitting in a darkened theater in the late ’50s and early ’60s:
“The black-and-white image, the lettering, the two faces on the seemingly ancient coin. It meant something – that you were going to see something special, something new, something completely different than anything you’d seen before.”
Born out of the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Mass., in the 1950s, Janus became the distributor (with library) for works from directors who have since become world cinema titans: Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Francois Truffaut among them.
One of the works Janus introduced American audiences to was “The Rules of the Game.” Starting today, the Starz FilmCenter begins a one-week run of Jean Renoir’s culturally incisive, comically astute wonder – all on a pristine new 35mm print that is the first struck in four decades.
At the country estate of Marquis Robert de La Chesnaye and his Austrian wife, Christine (beguiling Nora Grégor), the Paris elite gather. The guests ostensibly arrive for a weekend hunting party. Of course, there is more afoot.
At the behest of friend Octave, the Marquis invites André Jurieu. In a break with understood decorum, the aviator and national hero has very publicly declared his love for Christine. Along for the intrigue is Chesnaye’s mistress, whom he is trying to break with, having decided to be worthy of his mate.
“If ‘Citizen Kane’ isn’t the greatest film ever made, then it’s ‘Rules of the Game,”‘ says Howie Movshovitz, who programmed and will introduce “Rules” and the other Janus films that will screen this weekend and next month as part of the FilmCenter’s “50 Years of Janus Film” series.
In the absolute best of the “best of” lists – British magazine Sight & Sound’s once-a-decade canvass of critics – “Rules” has ranked second or third since 1962. In 2002, it was just behind “Vertigo” and “Citizen Kane,” which topped the list.
“I think ‘Rules of the Game’ is great for reasons entirely opposite ‘Citizen Kane,”‘ says Movshovitz. “Orson Welles is an extremely intrusive filmmaker. I adore that film, but he’s a very showy director. And Renoir’s exactly the opposite. He just sits back. He’s got these characters and he gives them a little nudge and then you watch.”
One of the most watchable performers in “Rules” is the director himself. The sweet bear of a man – son of the famed Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir – plays the sly, flirty Octave.
As the stolid groundskeeper Schumacher and his men beat the fields to stir rabbit and fowl, the elites yammer and gossip, then take aim.
What follows is the casual carnage of a shooting gallery. You don’t have to be an animal rights activist to recognize something dark in the scene of the festive hunting party on the prowl. It’s not the ethics of hunting that concern Renoir. It’s the utter ease of these participants who have nearly everything done for them.
There are rules that can be bent and broken, but you must understand them to do harm to them. A few in attendance think they’re players. They aren’t. And those in the elite’s employ, like Schumacher, are utterly aware of the codes, yet get trumped just the same.
Throughout the year, the FilmCenter will screen fresh 35mm prints from Janus. This weekend, see Truffaut’s knockout debut, “The 400 Blows,” shown in tandem with the film that influenced it, Jean Vigo’s “Zero for Conduct” (Saturday, 7:30 p.m.). And though it is a “blink and you’ll miss it” proposition, it’s more than worthwhile to rearrange your schedule for Max Ophul’s “The Earrings of Madame de …” (Sunday, 2:30 p.m.)
February brings Roman Polanski’s claustrophic “Knife in the Water”; Dusan Makaveyev’s trippy “WR: Mysteries of the Organism” (not suitable for youngsters); and Kurosawa’s “High and Low,” starring the director’s go-to star, Toshiro Mifune, as a Japanese businessman.
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com.
“The Rules of the Game”
NOT RATED|1 hour, 46 minutes|PARLOR COMEDY|Written and directed by Jean Renoir; photography by Jean Bachelet; starring Renoir, Marcel Dalio, Nora Grégor, Roland Toutain, Mila Parély, Odette Talazac|Opens today at the Starz FilmCenter.
