The Rules of the Game (original French title: La Règle u jeu) is a 1939 film directed by Jean Renoir about upper-class French society just before the start of World War II. Renoir's film is in part an adaptation of Alfred de Musset's Les Caprices de Marianne, a popular 19th-century comedy of manners, and is now widely regarded to be Renoir's greatest film, and among the greatest works of cinema ever.