The+Rules+of+the+Game

The Rules of the Game is a french film, released in 1939, directed by Jean Renoir. This film is well-known for expressing thoughts on the soon to come, cruel WW2. The scene I chose for this assignment is the scene where everyone is in the house, and they're watching the play and the skeleton comes out dancing to a song, where following it shows all of the affairs of the people. The overall theme of the movie is all of these high-class French people are involved inaffairs with each other, and they need to confront each other about their true feelings.

1. One important element that Renoir uses to portray the film's theme of cruelty, and secrecy is how he uses music. The music in this scene is key for it helps convey the mysteriousness and secrecy. It is a song called "Danse Macabre" composed by Camille Saint-Saëns. It compliments the tone and the mise en scène nicely. Which sets up many other aspects of the scene.

2. Costume is important in this scene especially for the tone and message of the scene. Using the skeleton costume as a metaphor of exposing the secrets and affairs between the people as the camera also pans around the room. All of the people are also wearing black clothing which makes it harder to see them, except for the ones in the middle of the setting. These are the innocent, fun-loving people who aren't as relevant as the others around, but still contrast the others' darkness.

3. Lighting also goes along with costume, tone, and theme in this scene. Renoir uses a darkly lit scene with high contrast. He lights the middle of the room with all of the secondary, innocent characters, and keeps the others involved in affairs and secrets darkly lit around the edges. Then he has sort of these spot lights going around passing by each of the darkly lit characters. This creates a chaotic, yet revealing feel about the characters and their truths 4. Camera placement and angle. The camera is placed sort of far away from all of these happenings as it pans past each of the people being lit up by the passing spot lights and keeps a sort of quick pace. It's pulled in close enough so you see the faces, but still makes it sort of hard to tell what they're doing with the lights moving.

5. Editing can also be looked at in this scene. Although during that section of it it's just one long continuous shot, it can actually be diagnosed that way as a way to show that they're all inter-connected with each other.

6. Another good use of camera placement is it switches back to the skeleton dancing also refer to the upcoming events of WW2, the death involved in it. This is because the skeleton is dancing the danse macabre, which is a dance said to be referring to death.

7. The director also uses few words to progress the scene. One of the few words spoken in the scene are of Christine saying she's too drunk, and she doesn't know what she's doing. This plays along with the theme that the characters need to realize what they're doing. 

8. Another good example of dark tone, is having André standing in the corner of the room, the last person, looking at the guy staring at Christine and some guy flirt. Instead of having him along with everyone else, he's alone, which also foreshadow's his death, his isolated death at the end.

9. Lastly, the shot of the ghosts walking down off the stage towards the crowd in the center of the room, but this is all seen from behind the skeleton who's dancing. The reason Renoir does this is to sort of block off the center crowd saying that they're not involved, and being able to see the outer rim of secretive people in the shadows, along with the skeleton.