Initial Release and Reception
The film was initially condemned for its satire on the French upper classes and was greeted with derision by a Parisian crowd on its première. The upper class is depicted in this film as capricious and self-indulgent, with little regard for the consequences of their actions. The French government banned it. In the 1943 edition of his famous Histoire du cinéma, Robert Brasillach wrote that the film was amongst Renoir's most jumbled and confused but applauded the biting satire, which he considered Proustian, and the technical variation employed by the director, ultimately concluding that the film was an unrealised masterpiece.
Renoir was deeply hurt by the initial reception. The French and the Vichy governments banned the film for being "demoralising", and it was removed from every cinema in Paris. After the outraged audience response, distributors demanded that Renoir cut the film drastically. He edited it from 94 minutes to 81 soon after its première. He reduced the role of Octave, which he played, including Octave's brief infatuation with Christine during the ending. The omission of this complication during the ending gave rise to the notion of a "second ending". Roger Manvell's authoritative Film (Pelican Books, 1944, 1950 revision, p. 208) refers to a first London showing in 1946.
Read more about this topic: The Rules Of The Game
Famous quotes containing the words initial, release and/or reception:
“Capital is a result of labor, and is used by labor to assist it in further production. Labor is the active and initial force, and labor is therefore the employer of capital.”
—Henry George (1839–1897)
“The steel decks rock with the lightning shock, and shake with the
great recoil,
And the sea grows red with the blood of the dead and reaches for his spoil—
But not till the foe has gone below or turns his prow and runs,
Shall the voice of peace bring sweet release to the men behind the
guns!”
—John Jerome Rooney (1866–1934)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)