Monday, February 23, 2015
The Hunt
Perhaps the most famous scene from The Rules of the Game involves the scene in which the Marquis' guests shoot rabbit and pheasant beaten from the forest by the gamekeeper. What is so distinctive and striking about the scene? Why does it pack such an emotional punch? What is the deeper significance or symbolism of this scene?
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The infamous scene, “The Hunt,” is vital in Renoir’s film, The Rules of the Game, because it showcases the chasm between the elite and the rest of society. The Rules of the Game is set in France at the rise of the World War II; however, the film never shows, alludes to, or mentions World War II, one of the most influential and catastrophic events in global history. The Second Great War was merely grazed over by the elite in this film, for their priorities in their lives are egocentric and revolving around social hierarchy. Octave, Robert, Andre, Christine, and the rest of the bourgeois protagonists are concerned with their plans for the day, relationships, and adulterous acts; moreover, they are concerned with the things that augment their self-worth. Renoir utilizes “The Hunt” scene to demonstrate the selfishness, carelessness, and the exclusive life of the higher class Europeans by showcasing their ruthless killings of rabbits and pheasants. The irony in this scene is endless; first off, there are millions of senseless killings in the war and these few elite do not even acknowledge it. Secondly, they have assistants running through the grass chasing the prey towards the hunters. They are not legitimately hunting for these gamekeepers are enabling their kills and amplifying their arrogance. The consequential emotional punch of this scene is that it depicts the carelessness of the higher class, the only people who were powerful enough to have a change on the world. The higher class is the only group of society that could have a say in the prevention of fascism, but rather they did not venture their interest out of their personal affairs, and subsequently, the Nazi regime rose to power. Renoir showcases the carelessness of the elite and that is why the film was so unpopular when it first was released; in present day, the film is favored for its sophisticated symbolism of the hunt being representative of WWII.
ReplyDeleteWhile the gory loss of animal life in the hunting scene is disturbing, what is truly emotionally traumatizing about the scene is the lack of respect the hunters have for lives that they deem to be insignificant or inconsequential. The scene’s quick jump cuts cause the viewer to be rapidly disoriented and before long all they see is a montage of rabbits being slaughtered by the jovial guests of the Marquis. There viewer still would have witnessed a brutal slaughter without the jump cuts but with them, the waiting time between kills is diminished and all the viewer sees is rabbit after rabbit meeting its doom. It gives the impression that the guests are willing to kill an almost infinity amount of game in order to have their fun. The amount of death in the scene is powerful, especially when compounded by the jump cut editing, but the scene only becomes truly disturbing after a bit of reflection on the viewer’s part. After watching the scene one quickly realizes that it is the ruling class of France that cares so little for animal lives. It is the ruling class that is willing to sacrifice lives they deem insignificant if it means that they will benefit in some way. Most importantly, the same ruling class has made it clear that the lives of many of their servants are quite insignificant. Renoir uses the hunting scene to highlight the deep divisions between class that exist in France, and by extension, the rest of the world. He takes his argument a step further, however, by asserting that the division is the fault of the rich. The same rich folk that have no trouble killing animals for fun would naturally have little concern for the lives of the poor and this, Renoir argues, is the reason for class division.
ReplyDeleteThe famous scene from The Rules of the Game is one of the most interesting scenes I have seen so far this year. The most distinctive thing about this scene was definitely the length of the takes and how they got shorter and shorter as the as the scene got more intense. The really long take when the servants are hitting the trees to push out the animals builds suspense. Then after the animals leave the woods and the upper-class start to shoot the animals, the scene gets really short, one to two seconds. To me, this builds a wall between the servants and the upper-class. The scenes with the upper class are really fast and which shows their lifestyle and how they are trying to go 100 miles an hour, while in contrast, the servants take their time in life. This scene packs such an emotional punch because all the animals are real and the guns are real. When the upper class shoots the animals they actual die and when the camera focuses on the animals after they have been shot, they are curling up to die. This scene makes you think about everything. The animals could be like the servants, where the upper class takes them out real easy without thinking about the consequences. The deeper meaning of this scene is that the upper class does not care about anyone besides themselves. If we look at the animals as part of the servant side of life, than it really shows how the lower class does not mean anything to them. This scene foreshadows the end of the film where the upper class does not even care that Shoemaker killed Andre.
ReplyDeleteThe Rules of the Games contains a single scene that is evidently distinguished from the rest of the film. Audiences have come to know this scene as the ‘Hunt’ scene because it depicts Marquis’ guests shooting rabbits and pheasants. Besides from the apparent violence contained in this scene, the cinematography varies from the average pace throughout the film. The viewer is used to seeing long continuous 20-second takes, yet the Hunt scene contains a sequence of takes lasting around 2-4 seconds each. This distinctive cinematography emphasizes the scene’s significance to the film’s message. Several scholars have interpreted that this film reflects the state of French society on the verge of a World War. It has been renowned as a ‘war-film,’ but it is the only film that does not contain a war. Rather the war theme is a metaphor to the clashing social classes in French society. The Hunt scene reflects the ‘war’ between the upper class and the ‘others.’ The upper class is depicted as Marquis’ guests who are shooting at the animals. The rabbits and the pheasants fulfill the role of the ‘other’ classes. The hunters kill the defenseless rabbits with no remorse. The killing of the rabbits represents the killing of "war-trapped innocents." The other classes are victims of the upper class’ tyranny in the same way that the rabbits are victims of the men’s metal bullets. The rabbits were just trying to survive in their environment and they are completely defenseless to the hunters. The other classes are just trying to get by while the upper class sits in their wealth and power. The Rules of the Game emphasizes this scene to stress the conflict between French social classes.
ReplyDeleteThe infamous scene, although not completely obvious, was a reference to the coming war. The deaths of innocents are a foreshadowing to the large amount of civilian lives killed during the war and also indirectly ties in with Andre’s ‘accidental’ death at the end. The rabbits and pheasants are trapped in an entirely hopeless situation, after being driven out to a specific place in the woods where they will die. It’s important that the upper-class are doing the hunting, representing how during the war it was mainly the rich with the advantage and the poor who suffered. This clearly makes the scene a reference that can apply to both warfare and the movie’s finale. The message is that killing and taking innocent lives is completely pointless. This scene has the tendency to make people uncomfortable because it’s a very blunt description of how humans find the need to take out their emotions on innocent creatures, and the scene is filmed in such a specific way with a mixture or short and long takes that it stand out amongst other scenes in this movie. The animals also represent Andre’s situation. Andre is innocent and trapped by his comparatively overwhelming emotions for Christine. He is incomparable to Robert, who is wealthy, upper-class and most importantly has Christine. Andre is an insignificant rabbit is socially being hunted by the upper-class. He becomes a source of conflict for Robert who needs Andre gone so that he can continue his life in peace. The upper-class represents the hunters, who cheat by paying their gamekeepers to scare animals out of their hiding places with sticks. They view hunting as a sport and show no remorse. They have no need to commit these actions, as they don’t eat the pheasants or rabbits, showing overindulgence and how they see it as a sport.
ReplyDeleteThe hunt scene in the French film "The Rules of the Game" is indubitably an epitome of the entire film, as it is a climactic scene, which showcases the fortes of previously developed series of themes. Not only are the physical qualities such as take lengths, framing, and mise-en-scene accelerated to atypical levels, but also undeveloped metaphorical themes are matured to their pinnacles. A viewer's very first reaction to the scene may potentially be a complex compilation of variegated emotions, ranging from stress, to sadness, to frustration, while witnessing the murder of completely innocent creatures by ignorant and spoiled people. These emotions are uniquely invoked by the camera techniques employed, which, if not present, could have altered the effect of the scene on the viewer. Firstly, the producers crunch the take lengths, from takes exceeding 15 seconds to those lasting less than 3, an atypical change, which consequently appeals to the viewer’s senses that invoke emotions. The camera is zoomed in significantly and pans to show the guiltless rabbits escaping the gamekeeper who are luring them into the “battlefield”, yet it is difficult to classify the framing specifically. Extreme long shots show the gunmen and the rabbits and/or birds as they are individually shot, yet take lengths remain very short, while subsequent close-ups gruesomely depict individual animals squirming to death in takes, which grow progressively shorter. The mise-en-scene is particularly important; a cloudy sky encompassing a vast forest of leafless trees is so sharply captured by the camera, and the prospect of violence, which will juxtapose such a peaceful environment is one of the factors, which emotionalizes the audience. Secondly, the shot is lent an unusual feel of realism as relatively blurry scenes of the sprinting rabbits suddenly sharpen and become significantly clearer when the animals have stopped running and are convulsing to death, unquestionably affecting the audience. Lastly, the camera’s dedication in one particular scene to show the entire death process of a rabbit juxtaposes the rabbit’s energetic, active and lively state to the relatively slow motion squirming of the tail, contraction of legs and rigor mortis, a feature which [CONTINUED IN FOLLOWING COMMENT]
ReplyDeletedeeply emotionalizes the viewer.
ReplyDeleteThere must be a deeper intention of the film director and/or producer when planning this scene, which obviously required meticulous filming and editing to be brought to the forefront of the movie. The context of the scene is very important: it is after many (not all) extramarital love relationships and affairs have occurred (including between Marquis and Genevieve, Andre and Christine, etc.) and before the accidental shooting of Andre, who Schumacher believed was flirting with Lisette (Schumacher’s wife). In other words, it is an instance of cruelty and sadism sandwiched between two other prolonged instances of immorality. Quite frankly, I do not believe the film has any hidden meanings; all it wants to perpetuate is the notion that the rich may be prone to get spoiled and devoid of a moral compass. This is quite evident when, after contributing to the carnage of dozens of innocent animals, Christine proclaims she is bored of hunting and agrees to Marquis’ proposal to take-up winter sports, without a single concern of the immorality of her actions. Perhaps an additional feature of the film may be to dramatize the notion that those who engage in real world warfare without legitimate reasons are equally as culpable as the rich, spoiled people who mass murder innocent animals as an overindulgence. In this way, it could and did discourage French youth from participating in WWII, which was just around the corner, and reflected the beliefs of whole nations, such as the United States, in that ideally, warfare should be about fighting immorality or unfairness, not expressly for personal interest. Finally, and this may be a stretch, perhaps the film is trying to highlight the difference between how powerful killers and the weak victims interpret the purpose of war. Marquis’ guests are killing the “annoying” rabbits, which keep “molesting” their property, introducing them precociously to their “inevitable” death (in addition to killing them for fun and as a sport). The rabbits, on the other hand, may see it as unfair that they must be victimized and killed simply by virtue of being at the right place at the right time to enjoy what the nature offered them. This foreshadows the United States’ bombing of Hiroshima during WWII; while the innocent, victimized residents of Hiroshima viewed it as an unfair genocide, which affected them and their off-springs simply by virtue of being at the right place at the right time maintaining their liveliness, the powerful US, humanely wanting to end the war and prevent 100,000s of casualties, saw it as a way to tell Japan to back off of its war efforts by taking the lives of “only” a few thousand (in addition to trying to test the effectiveness of the atomic bomb). In short, maybe the film is trying to state that the rich and powerful does in fact commit gruesome, immoral acts in the eyes of the victims, but perhaps these acts are justified in their own eyes. Or possibly, the powerful only care about the magnitude of lives, and not the type of lives taken.
The highly renowned ‘Hunt’ scene in the Rules of the Game is among the most peculiar scenes shot during the early stages of film making – the scene depicts the divide of the French social classes through the killing of animals and the wielders of those weapons. During the 1930s, with increasingly unstable relations in Europe, Jean Renoir took advantage and made it very clear what he thought about of the French’s social divide. As indicated in the movie, there was a clear divide between the higher social class and their working class. While most of the working class was busy doing the dirty work of their employers, that is, chasing the game towards their superiors, the upper class enjoyed various recreational activities. Interestingly enough, the leader of the working class gatekeeper Schumacher bears a German name, possibly as a gesture towards the recent German advancements in Europe – the fact that a German man was under the employment of the French indicates that the French still claim higher power since World War I. The merciless slaughter of the animals only reinforces the boast of power– short takes of film were used to demonstrate the abundance and the variety of game being killed. These flashes of images might cause some sort of fear to arise, followed with the camera tracking their death. Additionally, two hunters can be heard arguing over whose kill was whose; another salute this class’ ruthlessness.
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