Still Life by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Still Life

Page 122

Filming Émile Zola's ‘La Bête Humaine’ inspired Renoir to ‘make a break, and perhaps get away from naturalism completely, to try to touch on a more classical, more poetic genre.’ While shooting, Renoir began listening to baroque music by Louis Couperin, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Jean-Baptiste Lully and André Grétry. He later said ‘Little by little, my idea took shape and the subject got simpler. I kept living on baroque rhythms, and after a few more days, the subject became more and more precise.’ He also said he began imagining Simone Simon ‘moving to the spirit of the music.’ This preoccupation with baroque music during filming led to Renoir's original idea of adapting ‘Les Caprices de Marianne’ into a film.

‘The Rules of the Game’ is known for its early and elaborate use of deep focus cinematography. Renoir said he and his cinematographer Jean Bachelet ‘ordered some special lenses, very fast lenses, but ones that still gave us considerable depth, so that we could keep our backgrounds in focus almost all the time.’ 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. Approximately half of the shots in the film have camera movements. In many shots the camera moves, stops in place, changes direction and circles around the subjects. Film