Legacy
Since its restoration, The Rules of the Game has come to be regarded by many film critics and directors as one of the greatest films of all time. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 97% based on 59 reviews, with an average rating of 9.50/10. The website's consensus reads, "Its genius escaped many viewers at the time, but in retrospect, The Rules of the Game stands as one of Jean Renoir's—and cinema's—finest works." The decennial poll of international critics by Sight & Sound magazine ranked it #10 in 1952, elevated it to No. 3 in 1962, and #2 in 1972, 1982 and 1992. In 2002 it fell to No. 3 behind Citizen Kane and Vertigo. In 2012, it fell to No. 4, behind Vertigo, Citizen Kane, and Tokyo Story. It is the only film to have been included on every top ten list since 1952, that is until the 2022 list when it fell to #13. Empire magazine ranked at number 13 in its list of "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010. In Le Figaro's 2008 list of the greatest films ever made it tied for second with The Night of the Hunter, behind Citizen Kane. In 2018 the film ranked fifth on the BBC's list of the 100 greatest foreign-language films, as voted on by 209 film critics from 43 countries.
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. Schrader said the film "has it all ... [it] represents all that film can be." Martin Scorsese included it on a list of "39 Essential Foreign Films for a Young Filmmaker." French film critic André Bazin praised the film's mobile cinematographic style; he said its depth of field and deep focus mise-en-scène resembled that seen in Citizen Kane and The Best Years of Our Lives.
Many contemporary film critics have written favorably about the film. It has been hailed as a masterpiece by Kent Jones, Adolf Heinzlmeier, Berndt Schulz and Penelope Gilliatt, who said it was "not only a masterpiece of filmmaking, not only a great work of humanism in a perfect rococo frame, but also an act of historical testimony." Pauline Kael praised it: "Perhaps the most influential of all French films, and one of the most richly entertaining." Its themes have been analyzed by film scholar and Renoir's biographer Leo Braudy, who observed that the film "embodies a social world in which there are rules but no values. If you don't know the rules, you are crushed; but if you do know the rules you are cut off from your own nature." Dudley Andrew described the film's "complex social criticism" while Kenneth Browser and Peter Cowie wrote about its sense of humanity. Other critics have written about the film's darker themes; Andrew Sarris praised its depiction of class differences. 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", Lucy Sante, who labeled it "a dense clockwork mechanism" and Robin Wood, who said the film "operates on all levels." Critics have praised its farcical elements: Pauline Kael characterized it as "a great satirical comedy, a dance of death" and Gerald Mast wrote "[it] depicts the failure of love, the failure of society, and the failure of men to rise above the ridiculous. Their only success is that they try and they care." David Thomson praised Renoir's performance and remarked on "Renoir's admission that the director, supposedly the authoritative and manipulating figure, is as much victim as originator of circumstances." Amy Taubin said "I can think of no other film that is as unfailingly generous – to its audience, its characters, its actors, the milieu and the medium." J. Hoberman wrote about its influence on Woody Allen, Robert Altman and Mike Leigh.
The film especially was appreciated by filmmakers and film critics associated with the French New Wave movement. Bazin said "as a conventional love story, the film could have been a success if the scenario had respected the rules of the movie game. But Renoir wanted to make his own style of drame gai [merry drama], and the mixture of genres proved disconcerting to the public." 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." 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";and Louis Malle, who said "for all of us, my generation of French filmmakers, La Règle du jeu was the absolute masterpiece." 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." He also said "It is the credo of movie lovers, the film of films, the film most hated when it was made and most appreciated afterwards, to the extent that it ultimately became a true commercial success."
Satyajit Ray called it "a film that doesn't wear its innovations on its sleeve ... Humanist? Classical? Avant-Garde? Contemporary? I defy anyone to give it a label. This is the kind of innovation that appeals to me." Other notable filmmakers who have praised it include Bernardo Bertolucci, Wim Wenders, Peter Bogdanovich, Noah Baumbach and Cameron Crowe. Henri Cartier-Bresson, who worked on the film before beginning a long career as a photojournalist, called it "one of the summits of art and a premonition of everything that was to happen in the world." Robert Altman said "The Rules of the Game taught me the rules of the game."
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. Italian film critic Francis Vanoye stated The Rules of the Game has influenced numerous films that feature a group of characters who spend a short time together at a party or gathering – often while hunting animals – during which their true feelings about each other are revealed. Along with Gosford Park, these films include Jean Grémillon's Summer Light, Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night, Carlos Saura's The Hunt, Peter Fleischmann's Hunting Scenes from Bavaria, Nikita Mikhalkov's An Unfinished Piece for a Player Piano, Theo Angelopoulos's The Hunters and Denys Arcand's The Decline of the American Empire. Paul Bartel's Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills and Lawrence Kasdan's The Big Chill have also been compared to The Rules of the Game.
