The Jean Renoir moving picture, "The Rules of the Game", released in
1939, is now on DVD.  Some film critics have called this one of the best
pictures ever made, and among films in this exalted category, it may be
the only one with several scenes in which mechanical music is played.
One of the principal characters is a collector of mechanical music
instruments and automata.

The film is a critique of French aristocracy just before World War II,
with comic elements, and ending in a tragedy.  I enjoyed watching the
film, but it must be said that films of this type will not be everyone's
cup of tea.  The amount of mechanical music is not enough to justify
watching it for that alone, but will add pleasure to MMD subscribers
who do watch it.  For more information on the film and the DVD, visit
www.criterioncollection.com, and click on Browse the Collection, then on
The Rules of the Game.  Both were also extensively covered in Section 2,
the Arts and Leisure section, of the New York times for Sunday, January
18, beginning on page 9.

A videotape of this film has long been available, but this leaves much
to be desired.  This is because the original negative was destroyed when
the warehouse in which it was stored was bombed during World War II, and
so the tape had to me made from surviving prints, which were not of very
good quality.  However, Criterion was able to locate a duplicate negative
of good quality, and they made the DVD from that.  The quality seemed
excellent to me, but I suppose it would have been better had the
original negative survived.

This is a two DVD set.  The movie is all on the first DVD, with some
space left for commentary.  The second DVD is all commentary and
interviews.  Some of these are with Renoir.  The commentary of Max Douy
gives a little information on how the instruments were obtained, and
mentions a repair they made to the orchestrion, but most of us would
have appreciated more details.

The DVDs are to NTSC standards (sorry, those of you who live in
countries where the television uses SECAM or PAL).  There are subtitles
in English (the film, of course, is in French).

Cecil Grace

 [ The Criterion DVD is reviewed at
 [ http://www.frenchculture.org/cinema/releases/renoir/rulescritdvd04.html
 [ -- Robbie