La Règle du jeu

Renoir's depiction of an intransigent society teetering towards disaster was derided upon release and only later acclaimed as one of cinema’s most vital films.

In 1939 Renoir, a director associated with the left wing Popular Front, turned his gaze away from working people to the haute bourgeoisie, setting his action during a shooting weekend at a country house. It’s an upstairs-downstairs world where servants and masters become enmeshed in a tangle of desire, a jumble of motivations in which, in the film’s famous phrase, “Everyone has their reasons”.

Ranked 13th in the 2022 Sight and Sound Great Films of All Time poll