Originally released at 113 minutes, but quickly recut due to political pressions and popular outcry and eventually pulled from circulation by the Nazi during French occupation. Various cuts exists, ranging in length from 80 to 110 minutes.
Film historians Jean Gaborit and Jacques Durand salvaged all excised footage and managed to restore a complete version, presented at the 1959 Venice Film Festival.

"... 'A film in which all the intrepidity of the avant-garde survives, in which, from time to time, something like an echo of L'Age d'or can be discerned.' (Jacques Brunius). Indeed, there is much to link Rules of the Game to L'Age d'or (by way of La Vie est à nous). Once again the upper-class are at their most ridiculous during a typical soiree (here, a costume ball, the artifice made plain); like the comical Madame LaPlante, they mangent de tout though their play is as mechanical as one of the Marquis' musical toys. Behind the scenes, the skirmishes of lovers reveal the anarchy of desperation, after the rules of the game have been broken by the pilot André in his singleminded pursuit of l'amour fou. But Renoir is even more cynical than Buñuel, if that were possible; 'André is a hero in the air but hopeless on the ground, like all modern heroes,' reports Octave, the film's real, doomed hero (played by Renoir himself). Renoir described this brilliant tragicomedy as 'a sort of reconstructed documentary on the condition of a society at a given moment,' that being 1939, on the eve of a disastrous phase of French history."
— Pacific Film Archive

"La Règle du jeu [is] a film which forms the culmination of a remarkable decade of French film making. If Toni reveals most clearly the naturalistic tendency of Renoir's art, La Règle du jeu shows his theatrical impulse. Here, at the age of forty-five, after having made fourteen films in the preceding eight years and now working without constraints for his own production company, Renoir was free to express himself fully. Significantly he chose the form of a 'dramatic fantasy' in which the theatrical roots of his style - the debt to Musset, Marivaux and Beaumarchais - are very apparent: in the function of the dialogue, the division of characters into masters and servants, the 'play within a play' structure, the use of both improvisation and very formal placing of characters, and even in the articulation of an action played out in depth and time, allowing genuine performances from the actors. But while La Règle du jeu presents itself as a contrivance, a game with emotions, a toying with reality and illusion, it is also a self-portrait of rare depth, not least thanks to Renoir's own appearance in the key role of Octave, the go-between who straddles the worlds of masters and servants and inadvertently triggers off the final tragedy. At the same time the film - like Le Crime de M Lange or La Marseillaise - is a precise reflection of the time when it was shot, in this case the brief moment between the Munich agreements and outbreak of war. As the director has himself aptly observed, he was absolutely influenced and troubled by the state of mind of French society, but felt that 'one way of interpreting this state of mind to the world at that moment was precisely not to talk of the situation, but instead to tell a frivolous story'. ... The action moves from bedroom farce to a tragic conclusion, from the ruthlessness of the hunt sequence to the initially good-natured fun of the party entertainments, the beauty of the exteriors and the artificiality of the studio interiors, the quick cutting of the shooting during the hunt and the long takes in depth of the dialogue sequences, and so on. In acting style, the intense professionalism of such performers as Carette or Dalio is set against the clumsy amateurism of Nora Gregor (an Austrian princess in real life) and Renoir himself as the bear-like Octave. ... The complexity of the film is enormous and it repays multiple viewings. When first shown, La Règle du jeu was a total commercial failure - perhaps the worst in Renoir's career - but since then it has earned universal acclaim and now stands unchallenged as the summation of a decade of French film making which is far richer than any simple notion of poetic realism could define."
— Roy Armes: French Cinema. New York 1985, p. 107-108

"By February 1939 it no longer seemed evident that the surrender of Czechoslovakia to Hitler at Munich had "saved the peace." Soon a fatalistic mood of doom would hang over Europe. In this atmosphere Jean Renoir, anticipating war and deeply troubled by the state of mind he felt around him, thought he might best interpret that state of mind by creating a story in the spirit of French comic theatre, from Marivaux to Musset, a tradition in which the force which sets every character in motion is love and the characters have no other occupation to interfere with this pursuit. The result was The Rules of the Game, a dazzling accomplishment, original in form and style, a comic tragedy, absurd and profound, graced by two of the most brilliant scenes ever created. It is also, in the words of Dudley Andrew, "the most complex social criticism ever enacted on the screen." A total failure in 1939, The Rules of the Game now ranks as one of the greatest masterpieces of world cinema. ... Though the world of the film seems at times sheer chaos, The Rules of the Game, seen whole, is lucid and as precisely constructed as the Marquis' mechanical instruments. Unfortunately, the Parisians of 1939 never saw it whole. Later in his life Jean Renoir could laugh as he pronounced The Rules of the Game "a magnificent flop, perfect, complete" for by then his "frivolous drama" was hailed as a masterwork. But in 1939 he was not amused. The distributor had cut eight minutes from Renoir's final cut before the film's release and at the premiere, the Parisian audience howled and whistled and threw things at the screen. In a week, ten more minutes had been cut from the film but audiences still hooted. In a few more weeks the exclusive opening run ended; this most ambitious production of the year had quickly become a commercial disaster. Renoir was so discouraged, he thought he must either give up cinema or leave France. He did leave for Hollywood a year later to avoid working under the Nazi occupation, leaving the film to its fate."
— Alexander Sesonske

"Depth of focus is one of Renoir's most important techniques for developing the uncontrollable events that grow out of the complicated interactions among individuals. In the entire film there are only 337 shots, which means that Renoir lets the events unfold uninterruptedly before the camera instead of restructuring experience through montage.  He is interested in showing that each character has his own justified perspective, which must be seen in relationship to his environment and the people with whom he interrelates."
— Marsha Kinder, Beverle Houston: Close-Up

"Autre grande nouveauté de La Règle du Jeu, la continuité n'est plus établie selon le modèle en usage, issu de la dramaturgie classique. Au développement linéaire du drame construit, Renoir substitue un développement à lignes brisées, 'croisées', comme l'exigeait, en somme, son sujet La Règle du Jeu comporte des 'passes', des 'contres', illisibles pour le non-initié, tout un arsenal de coups, qui se croisent eux aussi. Ce qu'on a appelé l'enchevêtrement des actions est non pas désordre, mais un ordre voulu, complexe, concerté, rigide comme un protocole. Cette technique de construction filmique, qui tient à la fois de la technique de l'ancien 'maître à danser' et du 'maître d'armes', était ici en situation, A SA PLACE..."
— Jean Mitry: Dictionnaire du Cinéma. Paris 1963

La Règle du Jeu de Jean Renoir — Dossier établi par Roger Viry-Babel, Institut Européen de Cinéma & d'Audiovisuel Université Nancy 2
A French site on the film

The Online Jean Renoir Resource Centre: La regle du jeu (1939)

Film: ***** out of *****
DVD: **** out of *****