Jean Renoir's "La Regle du jeu (The Rules of the Game) "must be the nearest thing in cinema to an undisputed masterpiece, a movie universally cherished by critics and film-lovers, central to the work of film theorists, and revered by filmmakers. But on its first release in 1939 it was a disaster with the public and it won few defenders in the press. Renoir had planned his new film as a comedy of manners in a popular French tradition. This entertainment, showcasing French ensemble performance at its finest, was designed to accommodate Renoir's darker purpose--"a precise description of today's bourgeoisie" at a time when there seemed to be no check on the triumph of Nazism. The depth and subtlety of Renoir's achievement was acclaimed at last in 1956, when a restored version was unveiled--the first ever release of a "Director's Cut."In this study the film's troubled history is related to the profundity and originality of its form. "La Regle du jeu "is analyzed as an anguished comedy whose characters are all, in Renoir's words, "dancing on a volcano," and unable to resist the slide towards catastrophe.