The ensemble cast includes Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost, Mila Parély, Marcel Dalio, Julien Carette, Roland Toutain, Gaston Modot, Pierre Magnier and Renoir.

The film depicts members of upper-class French society and their servants just before the beginning of World War II, showing their moral callousness on the eve of destruction.

Renoir and cinematographer Jean Bachelet made extensive use of deep-focus and long shots during which the camera is constantly moving, sophisticated cinematic techniques in 1939.

For two years, Lisette has been married to Schumacher  – the gamekeeper at Robert's country estate, La Colinière in Sologne – but she is more devoted to Christine than to her husband.

In the closing moments of the film, Octave and Marceau walk away into the night as Robert brings Schumacher back into the household and explains that he would report the killing to the authorities as nothing more than an unfortunate accident.

On 8 December 1938 Georges Cravenne published a press release in Paris-Soir announcing that Renoir and Pagnol were about to sign an agreement to procure a large theatre where they would publicly screen "the films that they would direct from then on".

[23] Renoir's initial inspiration by Les Caprices de Marianne led to the film's four main characters correlating with those of the play; a virtuous wife, a jealous husband, a despairing lover and an interceding friend.

[27] François suggested newly famous stage actress Michele Alfa for the role of Christine, and Renoir went with his common-law wife Marguerite and Zwoboda to see her perform in a play.

[33][40] While he finished the script the entire company played cards and bonded; they described it as a happy time in their lives just before the horrors of World War II began.

[44] To raise additional funding for the over-running production, Zwoboda had used the success of La Bête Humaine to sell advanced screening rights in large theatres to Jean Jay, the director of the Gaumont Film Company.

Christine was initially written as a bored, upper class bourgeois whose main preoccupation was planning parties, but Renoir amended this to accommodate Gregor's acting.

"[53] Cartier-Bresson said the improvisation during filming was like a jam session; both cast and crew members were encouraged to suggest ideas and dialogue would often change on the morning of the shoot.

"[71] In the 1943 edition of Histoire du cinéma, Robert Brasillach wrote that The Rules of the Game was among Renoir's most "jumbled" and "confused" films but applauded the biting satire, which he considered "Proustian."

[1] The Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated "we are especially anxious to avoid representations of our country, our traditions, and our race that changes its character, lie about it, and deform it through the prism of an artistic individual who is often original but not always sound.

"[84] During shooting, Renoir was offered the chance to film an adaptation of Tosca by Italian producers; he agreed to the deal on 14 July 1939, and saw it as an opportunity to leave France.

[38] Claude Chabrol, Alain Resnais and Louis Malle were all in attendance and publicly called Renoir their master while praising the reconstructed version of the film.

[97] This sense of doom began just before shooting started in January when Barcelona fell to Franco and throughout the production when Prime Minister of France Édouard Daladier recognized Francoist Spain, Italy annexed Albania and Adolf Hitler prepared his Invasion of Poland.

Renoir's biographer Ronald Bergan said the film hit a raw nerve with the public by depicting "people, who might have had an influence in shaping the world, [but] did nothing to prevent an advance of Fascism; some of whom, indeed, actually welcomed it".

[103] The rabbit hunt scene is often compared to the senseless death that occurs during war; Renoir said he wanted to show a certain class of people killing for no reason.

[45][104] Bergan saw the analogy to world events and wrote "in the great set piece of the hunt, the callous cruelty of the guests is laid bare as they fire at any rabbit and bird that moves after the beaters have led the game to slaughter".

"[96] This depth of field in his shots allowed Renoir to shoot in large rooms and long corridors in the chateau sequences, and characters were able to move freely between the background and the foreground.

One does not notice cuts, one delights in a continuity which is often on the verge of chaos and finally leads to tragedy in the intrusion of subplot into plot, of the theatrical into the real and of disaster into balances.

[109] Renoir wanted to shoot the film in color to take advantage of the beauty of Sologne in the winter but he was unable to secure funding from Jean Jay.

[110] Music used in the film includes Mozart's Three German Dances, Monsigny's Le déserteur, Louis Byrec, Léon Garnier and Eugène Rimbault's En revenant de la revue [fr], Strauss's Die Fledermaus, Saint-Saëns's Danse macabre, Chopin's Minute Waltz and Scotto's À Barbizon.

[117] Critics and directors who have placed it on their Sight & Sound lists include Richard Peña, Michel Ciment, David Denby, Lawrence Kasdan, Steve McQueen and Paul Schrader.

[93] The complexity of Renoir's storytelling techniques have been examined by Roger Ebert, who called it "so simple and so labyrinthine, so guileless and so angry, so innocent and so dangerous, that you can't simply watch it, you have to absorb it",[128] Lucy Sante, who labeled it "a dense clockwork mechanism"[129] and Robin Wood, who said the film "operates on all levels.

"[134] Film critic Claude Beylie called it "the cornerstone of the work of Jean Renoir, the point of arrival and the swan song of the French cinema of the thirties ...The Rules of the Game is a rare combination of satire, vaudeville and tragedy.

"[135] It was a major source of inspiration for Alain Resnais, who said seeing the film was "the single most overwhelming experience I have ever had at the cinema";[89]and Louis Malle, who said "for all of us, my generation of French filmmakers, La Règle du jeu was the absolute masterpiece.

"[136] François Truffaut articulated the film's enormous influence and said "it isn't an accident that The Rules of the Game inspired a large number of young people who had first thought of expressing themselves as novelists to take up careers as filmmakers."

"[127] Altman's Gosford Park is similar to The Rules of the Game in many of its plot elements, including the relationship between wealthy people and their servants as well as the hunting sequence.