Film Review
The Diary of a Chambermaid was the penultimate
film made by French director Jean Renoir during his stint in Hollywood in the 1940s, a
satisfying blend of farce and melodrama which is widely regarded as one of his best English-language
films. It is an adaptation of the 1931 play "Le roman d'une femme de chambre" by
André de Lorde and André Heuzé, which was based on a novel by Octave
Mirbeau (a friend and sponsor of the director's father, the painter Auguste Renoir).
The film stars Paulette Goddard, famously the side-kick and one-time wife of the
comedy giant Charlie Chaplin (she starred in several of his best known films). At
the height of her popularity and skill as a performer, the charismatic Goddard is radiant
as the heroine of
The Diary of a Chambermaid,
showing her distinctive flair for pathos and comedy. There are some pleasing contributions
from her co-stars, particularly Burgess Meredith (the film's co-producer and Goddard's
husband at the time) as the mad flower-eating hedonist Mauger and Francis Lederer as the
thoroughly creepy villain Joseph (who looks like something that just hobbled off the set
of a German expressionist horror film).
Of the half a dozen or so films that Jean
Renoir made in Hollywood,
The Diary of a Chambermaid
is the one that is most readily identifiable as his work and nearest to his previous
French films. The film it most resembles is his 1939 masterpiece,
La Règle du jeu, which was also concerned
with the tensions between the ruling elite and the downtrodden lower orders.
There are also echoes of an earlier film,
Nana (1926) - both films depict an impoverished
young woman determined to improve her lot by any means. Add to this the stylistic
and textual similarities - Renoir wasn't afraid to alternate between farce and drama,
and in this he succeeds brilliantly. The chillingly dark final passages of the film
(very nearly film noir) make a striking contrast with the hilarious comic sequences in
the early part of the film. Renoir saw comedy and tragedy as two unavoidable components
of human experience, and this can be seen in many of his films.
It is interesting
to compare this film with Luis Buñuel's subsequent version of Mirbeau's novel,
Le
Journal d'une femme de chambre (1964), which starred Jeanne Moreau. This
later film focuses much more on the darker, sexual aspects of the novel, exploring all
manner of perversion and wickedness, against the backdrop of a world in moral and social
decline (thereby allowing a greater evil - Fascism - to take control). Renoir's
interpretation is far more optimistic and comparatively whimsical (and let's not forget
he was subject to far greater censorship than Buñuel). He effectively uses
the story as an excuse to revisit the societal and political themes of his previous films,
such as
La Règle du jeu and
La
Grande illusion. The film shows the evil which artificial social barriers
can engender and concludes that Utopia (that universally sought Happy Ending) can only
be achieved when all men (and women) have equal status.
© James Travers 2007
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Jean Renoir film:
The River (1951)
Film Synopsis
In the early 1900s, a young chambermaid, Célestine, arrives from Paris to take
up her new post at a country house in Normandy. Her employers are the Lanlaires,
a pair of staunch monarchists whose mortal enemy is their eccentric Republican neighbour,
Captain Mauger. Madame Lalaire plans to exploit Célestine's charms to persuade
her moody son, Georges, to stay at the family home. Célestine quickly discovers
that she has four suitors - Monsieur Lalaire, Mauger, Georges, and Joseph, the Lanlaires'
funereal valet. She has no interest in love; all she wants is to marry a man with
wealth so that she will never have to work again…
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.