游戏规则

 雷诺阿的不朽杰作，首次推出时遭到禁映，直到1959年威尼斯电影节才恢复原貌。故事发生在二战前夕，一群法国贵族在某庄园共度周末，由此反映出阶级矛盾、社会冲突等形形色色的人性瑕疵。所谓游戏的规则，就是说谎言和欺骗等卑劣手段是战前法国社会不可违背的游戏规则，谁要是违反了这一规则，就要被当时的社会圈子所灭杀，成为那个社会的牺牲品。

影片融合了各种风格，从写实到幻想，从喜剧、悲剧到言情，各种元素都得到发挥。但影片的寓意却非常明显，残忍的狩猎场景将批判矛头直指人性的异化和残忍，而且还带出导演对于社会黑暗势力的无可奈何以及当时社会前景的悲观失望。

    《游戏规则》所探究的主题大多被认为是对上世纪二三十年代上流社会进行“最后晚餐”的“临摹”，相较而言，雷诺阿在情节设置上似乎也遵循着一套原则——重视周围环境与内心情绪的反差。记者的激情报道、现场围观群众的呐喊、友人奥科迪夫的接待、甚至是飞机的轰鸣声，这种刻意极力营造的欢快气氛就是为了与飞行员朱利出场后的悲观情绪造成强烈的反差。罗伯特与妻子克里斯汀的生活在富裕物质条件的包装下显得美满幸福，这种演员式的相处却被导演用一句“上流社会的爱情是两个幻想的交换和两个身体的接触”打破，接着又赤裸裸地、近乎没有过渡地将罗伯特与情人的关系展现人前。朱利的撞车也是在近乎毫无预测的观众心理状态下发生，没有过多的情绪渲染，仅有一个忧伤的表情特写，在当代观众看来不得不觉得突兀，但是导演处理情节的方式反而达到一种“陌生化”的效果，时不时让观众从叙事中解脱出来，理性看待事件的发展。导演在处理奥科迪夫与克里斯汀关系的过程中，着意渲染一种亲密无间的友情，观众无法想象克里斯汀在剧终时刻会恳求奥科迪夫与之私奔，另一个原因在于奥科迪夫是一个肥胖笨拙、外表毫无吸引力的人，起码跟朱利和罗伯特没有可比性。罗伯特在猎场新招的家丁是剧作中的关键人物之一，他身上所具有的种种恶习与罗伯特和女仆杰西对他的喜爱格格不入，近乎颠倒是非。剧中设置的所有人物在叙事前后几乎都没有转变，雷诺阿并不是讲目光聚焦于一个人物，而是一群人，只有飞行员朱利可以算是一个特例，他是唯一一个敢于直视自己内心的角色。

    一次上流社会的聚会将所有人物聚集在一起，上演了一出悲喜交加的闹剧。从剧作合理的层面讲，如何让朱利合理地加入这次聚会是一个难题，按照正常事理，罗伯特明显知道克里斯汀与朱利有些许暧昧关系，奥科迪夫看似对双方进行了调解，但是却没有实质解决这层矛盾的行动。换句话说，导演甚至觉得这种关系在上流社会没有任何矛盾可言。在聚会中，当杰西的丈夫发现新来的家丁与杰西有暧昧关系，下层之间的暗涌与上层之间的狂欢交织在一起，虽然从情绪上看似削弱了矛盾冲突，但是这种外在形式的对比本身就是一种冲突，甚至效果更加强烈。朱利的死是一个精妙的设计，也是一个震撼的结局。当杰西的丈夫开枪的那一刹那，似乎一切都结束了，一切矛盾都解开了，因为他帮这个本身安于现状的社会除掉了一个异类，即使是一个畸形的社会。而他只能算作一个枪手，真正的凶手是所有人。

    “悲的极致与喜的极致是一种表情”，这种悲喜交加的极致体验正是导演希望带给观众的，情节的巧合、急转与反差是造成这种感受的规则，也是雷诺阿创作《游戏规则》的剧作规则。

In The Rules of the Game, the hunting scene foreshadows the murder of Andre. The upper-class with their servants committed the murder, and the weaker is the victim, both the rabbits and Andre who doesn’t suit for this world full of lies. Masters and servants regarded the hunting as a game, in which they obtained entertainment. In the same, when Andre was shot dead, the master replaced “murder” with “coincidence”. For these reasons, the scene of hunting plays an extremely vital role in the whole film. Most obviously, it differs from other scenes in terms of visual style.
In most parts of the film, Renoir is a cool narrator, directing with still shots and panning shots. He admitted that he “wanted the audience to have the impression they were seeing a single shot following the people and that there had not been any cutting” . When Octave is guided into Christine’s bedroom, to the living room with Robert, and to the hall with the server , the scenes are mainly quite long and moving in panoramas. No careful close-ups revealing the spirit status of people. Renoir’s camera is just like an observer watching a show from a long distance. Similarly, throughout the last part of the film, the murder, the camera even gets trapped in a corner, where it is forced to watch the action from a fixed position. No intervene to break the long action, no agony when the murder happens. Renoir observed it in a half amused and half anxious way.
However, the hunting scene is an exception. It’s the fastest-pace scene in the film with a lot of cuttings. Initially, it requires fast rhythm when shooting the scene of rabbits running and birds flying. Moreover, the scene constantly cuts between different running rabbits and the hunters, in order to make a tense atmosphere for the rabbits and an enjoyable atmosphere for the hunters. Thus the contrast forms.
Also, it uses much more close-ups than the other scenes. The extremely wonderful close-up is a dying rabbit, even struggling to kick its legs like a kind of dancing. It’s vivid and cruel to represent it with a totally complete and clear close-up as long as 3 seconds, which puts the misery before death directly in front of us, scares us and arouses our sympathy.
The fast cutting and the close tracking of the rabbits imply the hunting scene is no longer Renoir’s calm description from an angle of observer. Actually, we can rarely see any other scenes filled with feelings like this one. Even the murder scene is designed to be as less objective and less striking as possible. But the result turns out to be infectious and impressive, which should owe to the hunting scene, as a metaphor of the murder, attracts more attention than the murder.
The hunt scene tells more about the murder than the murder scene itself. In the hunting, the wealthy masters act as murders, and the servants as accomplices. The servants drive the rabbits and birds to a certain direction for their masters, and the masters enjoy the feast of killing. In terms of the form, this “outdoors” scene has a lot in common with the “inner” world of the mansion.
Just like the rabbits running here and there, Andre, Robert, Christine, Lisette, the gamekeeper Schumacher and the poacher Marceau hide-and-seek in the same way. The hiders want to escape just like the rabbits do, all of them risking their lives with guns pointed to them.
The chateau is holding a big show, at the same time, a chasing show is on display. It’s so ridiculous and ironic a scene that wealthy masters and servants in tidy and noble clothes chased each other like hunters and frightened animals. No wonder the spectators who were watching the show regard it totally as part of the acting. Spectators didn’t take it seriously, just as a game.
Like the chaos during the hunting, inside the mansion there’s a big mess. The relationship among people is complicated, unexpected people joining the chasing game. Some were sad, mad, and some were terrifically delighted, correlated with people’s reaction after the hunting.
The mostly important quality in common between the outside hunting and the inside chasing is that, in essence, it’s the people who get control of weapon control the game. In face of guns, fastest rabbits can only survive due to luck. The gunman is also bound to shoot somebody, who turns out to be Andre, the most innocent one in the bloody game. Why is Schumer, the gamekeeper designed to shoot Andre dead? Because he is the gamekeeper, who puts the game in order and tells people to follow the rules with his gun. The word “gamekeeper” is a kind of metaphor itself. Faced with the coming World War II the society was like a huge hunting game, where who has the weapons controls the game.
Renoir commented on The Rules of the Game that “it’s a film about a group, a film representing a society.” A society that “everything they believed in was collapsing” . “It’s not so difficult to work well when the compass of anxiety points in the true direction.” However, this movie was a resounding flop after releasing because of this true direction revealed in the movie.
The Rules of the Game was made just before the war. Renoir said in making it, he had wanted to make a film in which French society was seen as “dancing on a volcano”. And beneath its seemingly innocuous appearance the story attacks the very structure of society.
Renoir preferred to let actors play in the décor and catch them unawares. The camera established a “narrator” whose stance and gestures express an inhuman indifference to the human figures within its world. The suffering and joys of the inhabitants of that world move us, although the camera frames that world as if it were inhabited by puppets, not people. For example, we never know Christine well although she is the main role. What she thinks? What she wants? Most of the characters are too mysterious to dig out.
The only exception is Andre. At the very beginning sequence, Andre came back as a hero, but burst out truth, unable to conceal his emotions. There are master level, servant level and bottom level (as Marceau), but there’s no level that Andre belongs to, because he is the only honest person in the movie. Robert is tired of love affairs with his mistress. Christine says I love you to three different men since she knew Robert’s betrayal, which are neither true nor totally false. Lisette is the mistress of Octave and she flirts with Marceau. Octave, Andre’s honest friend, wants to occupy Christine by his own. It’s a world full of lies, and survival of the fittest. Octave comments Andre is floating in the air while Robert is on the ground. At last the most honest person is out of game and Andre’s murder is covered with another lie of “incidence”.
The Rules of the Game is a continuous integrity, full of metaphors and poetic rhythms. Among them the hunting scene is worth discovering. It differs from the other scenes with a fast cutting and represents extremely strong emotions. The wealthy masters as well as their servants regard shooting as a game, and replace murder with incidence. The mess both inside and outside of the mansion shows a world of lies, dangerously living on and on.


References:
1. Jean Renoir: Renoir on Renoir, News, Essays and Remarks, Translated by Carol Volk, Cambridge University Press, 1989
2. Andre Bazin: Jean Renoir, Simon and Shuster New York, first published in France in 1971 English translation in 1973
3. Jean Renoir: My life and my Films, William Collins & Sons an Atheneum Publishers Inc
4. Peter Wollen: La Regle du jeu and Modernity, first published in Film Studies, 1,1999. Reprinted in Wollen’s Paris Hollywood: Writings on Film. Verso, 2002
5. William Rothman: The Filmmaker Within the Film: The Role of Octave in the Rules of the Game, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, 7(3), Summer 1982
6. Ginette Vincendeau: The Exception and the Rule, Sight and Sound, vol.2, no.8, December 1992:34
7. Laurence Wylie: La Verite Derriere les Masques, quarterly Review of Film Studies, 7(3), Summer 1982

 《游戏规则》中男主角朱利约死于同是底层阶级的庄丁舒马赫枪下。讽刺的是虽然罪魁是所谓上流社会的游戏规则，可在一连串蝴蝶效应下，误杀惨剧只发生在两个棋子间。表面上没有谁是刻意蓄谋者，真正兵不血刃的大杀局隐匿在上流社会的声色犬马中。正是一人被杀，众生都是共犯，最可怕的是这种戕害是一种对生命无声无息的抹杀，是心照不宣的意会。联想到布努埃尔在《自由的幻影》的超现实表述中有一个隐藏在闹市中的狙击手，随意射杀行人，却被法律豁免。《游戏规则》的故事发生在20世纪初，20世纪末布努埃尔又把现代性的谋杀演绎成无足轻重的屠戮，这是自19世纪末20世纪初资本大洗牌后的渐进发展中，人类在现代社会中逐渐理性化、世俗化直至异化（如迈克尔哈内克《第七大陆》中表现的中产阶级畸形行为），最终呈现出与以往时代不同的毁灭方式。
  关于时代的划分，历史学家、社会学家们所取的时间轴坐标和研究方向不同，不同地域、每个阶段的跨度也就不同。我们习惯性把自己当前生活的时代称为“现代”，有社会学者将文艺复兴的启蒙称为现代曙光的标志，实际我们这里以工业革命来作为坐标，是资本发展到一定程度引发产业和科学技术大革新时代的开启，一时间科技革命、金融危机、世界性大战争在20世纪伊始接踵而至，人类在谋求更好生存方式的同时也改变了死亡的模式，从本片的的惨案中截取一个视角的点，来看看不同的时代的死亡：
   暂且把欧洲的发展历程断代为：古典时代、中世纪和现代。联想到古希腊的阿基米德之死，在那个社会关系相对单纯的城邦时代，阿基米德死于一个鲁莽而急躁的罗马士兵刀下，死前的阿基米德正在作算术，他的最后一句话“走开，别弄坏了我的图形”是因为士兵影响了他的演算。这简直是一个理想化的孩子夭折似的死亡，受害者和犯人间的关系也极为单纯。而在现代社会全然不同的制度、规则下那种伊卡洛斯式的古典式理想化浪漫必定是要被取代的，在资本的导向下，熙熙攘攘皆为利来利往使人为的行动的呈现一种自我趋向性，而这种必须考虑后果的行为规范必须要受理性化控制，而不是理想化。《游戏规则》中的朱利约想用飞机飞越大洋的壮举去真正征服上流社会女子的芳心，也注定像伊卡洛斯被焚化的人工蜡翼一样，理想化死于理性化之手。让雷诺阿自己也在最终借自演角色之口说出了：你必须理解，现代的英雄都是一样的，在空中，他们是神奇的，可回到地面，他们虚弱，贫穷而无助，就如小孩一样笨拙，他们能飞越大西洋，却无法穿过行人交叉路外的一条街。
   注意到一个细节，片中上流社会的代表罗伯特在与情妇热纳维埃芙逢场作戏、谈情说爱时分别站在家中收藏的艺术品东方佛像前并被作为特写镜头展现。不知道这是不是让雷诺阿的一个小隐喻，侧面映射宗教自中世纪以来，从无处不在的统治地位逐渐退化。中世纪的死亡是带有迫害和扼杀性质的，是宗教权威赤裸裸的对人本位以及自然科学探究欲的镇压，比如哥白尼、伽利略、布鲁诺的死亡。现代的人本位和社会本位取代了王权和宗教，同时也把赤裸排异的权力规则隐性化为类似游戏一样的人际规则。于是毫无信念可言的情爱被信誓旦旦的交易，甚至死亡也像是导戏一般，可怕的是无论是谎言还是谋杀都若无其事的悄然发生。
    现代社会的奇怪在于：在人的价值被最大化认可后又呈现出贬值的混乱状态。现代社会一边倡导自由平等，推动社会发展的资本一边不均等发展，类似托马斯品钦提过的社会熵是在呈现一种蓬勃的高发展高耗散的高熵阶段，而熵増的过程又注定是混乱无序的。在《游戏规则》中浮华的名流、虚荣的仆人、圈外的参与者都在争风吃醋、默许交易、滥情虚伪中粉墨登场。对收藏机械工艺品的癖恋，脱不下的兽皮表演装，舞台上身着骷髅服目迷五色的表演，猎杀野味的隐喻，以及杀人案结束后映在庄园别墅墙上犹如鬼魅的阴影，这些无一不在暗示人本位在自矜与骄傲中的一种异化，让雷诺阿用冷静而又全面的镜头语言不夸张的展现某种怪诞的萌芽。无法适应怪诞的集体规则本就注定会成为众人眼中的怪胎，现代社会的猎杀目标也正在于此。
    王小波在关于21世纪的描述中说：理想主义的光芒已经黯淡，人类不再抱着崇高的理想，想要摘下天上的星星，而是把注意力放到现实问题上去。当一切都趋于平淡，人类进入了哀乐中年。《游戏规则》中被杀害的无辜羔羊朱利约正是一个不肯尘埃落定于游戏圈子中的孤绝飞行员，带有某种悲剧英雄的色彩。王小波死于20世纪末，我们生活在他预言的21世纪，让雷诺阿在20世纪初就慨叹了一个天真者的死亡。
   

    初看《游戏规则》，仿佛一部爱情轻喜剧，聚焦上流社会复杂的男女关系，但当大宅前人兽散尽，字幕打出“FIN”，带来的观影体验又远超出观众预期——悲喜交加，混乱中掺杂几分戏谑，才完整构成一部《游戏规则》。
    两场狩猎戏占据全片重要位置，导演在视觉上的处理并不花哨，而采用更为朴素的自然风格，表面平静，危机暗涌；狩猎需遵守规则，否则就是“偷猎”，人际何不如此！上流社会的游戏规则即无尽的谎言，虚伪成为爱或保护的借口，偶尔如朱利约、马素一类冒险家，怀揣理想主义，靠着胆大或小聪明闯入，也抵不过在留下短暂笑料后悲剧收场。片中舒马赫永远一身军装，面容冷酷，不知是否想暗喻他另一层身份：维护贵族秩序的警卫，将不合规矩的人永远驱逐。
    如观众所料，混乱终于在宴会上引爆，这段场景被后世奉为经典不无道理，雷诺阿将一贯的深焦调度发挥到极致，前、后景演员事件同时发生，互相独立又彼此相关，配合摄影机运动，营造出强大空间纵深感。随着闹剧升级，人物间运动或交叉或并进，都在有条不紊中展开；甚至还出现一两次被好莱坞视作大逆不道的越轴，却也迎合了场景所需混乱情绪。
   摄影机运动代替剪辑完成景别变换在全片俯拾皆是，代替了交代环境和人物关系时呆板的剪辑，真正做到了将大信息量融入单个镜头，行文简洁而激情。
   上文所提及的朱利约、马素，虽有令人敬佩的独立人格，但前者过于情绪化，后者性格懦弱，真正引起观众情感共鸣的，是那个最不起眼的奥塔夫。人人身边都有这样一位朋友，没有出众的外表或万贯家财，能力平庸，待人却惊人地坦诚，毫无心机，愿意为朋友放弃本属自己的机会。这样的小人物，注定无法适应游戏规则，他的退场，比起飞行员和小混混，更能虏获观众的同情。片中奥塔夫由导演雷诺阿亲自扮演，表现力不逊普通演员。
   《游戏规则》最初上映时曾遭恶评一片，被媒体批为伤风败俗，直到1959年威尼斯电影节重映，人们才重新认识到它的伟大。游戏规则也会随社会变化，而经典总能耐住时间，等待规则合适之日，向世人展现它被低估的精华。