"The Diary of a Chambermaid", based on the novel "Le Journal d'une Femme de Chambre" by Octave Mirbeau, is set in the France of the late 19th century. A young woman named Celestine arrives at the country home of the wealthy Monsieur and Madame Lanlaire to take up a position as a chambermaid. The attractive Celestine soon finds that she has three admirers: Georges, the handsome but sickly son of the family, their elderly and eccentric neighbour Captain Mauger, and Joseph, the taciturn stony-faced valet. (Joseph's duties seem more in line with those of a butler, but in the film he is always described as "the valet").
I watched the film because it was directed by Jean Renoir, who has the reputation of being a heavyweight director, but actually it comes across as fairly frothy, lightweight stuff. Perhaps Renoir was asked to direct it because it was about his native country. I have never read Mirbeau's novel but from the film I suspect that his objective may have been to satirise the pretensions of the French Third Republic, which for all its talk of "égalité" was not in fact particularly egalitarian and remained as much a land of masters and servants as any other country in 19th century Europe. (Unlike the first two Republics, it did not come into being as the result of a revolution. It was originally intended as an interim government pending the restoration of the monarchy after the Franco-Prussian War, but became the permanent form of government by default when the politicians failed to agree on a candidate for the throne). These political considerations, however, were probably lost on an American audience in the forties; political satire can lose much of its point when it is set several decades in the past, especially in a foreign country.
The film remains light and frothy even though two characters end up being killed. In both cases this seems like justifiable homicide, although in the first case this was probably not intended. The victim of this killing is Captain Mauger, played by Burgess Meredith as a manically hyperactive old fool, and the most irritating character in the film, a position for which there is considerable competition. Mauger's main challenger for this title is Irene Ryan's Louise, the family's other maid. It is said that there are some species of bat whose squeaks are too high-pitched for the human ear to hear, and Ryan's performance as the hysterically silly Louise shows that this can be true of people as well as bats.
Paulette Goddard is today best remembered as the third Mrs Charlie Chaplin, although she was an important star in her own right during the forties. Here she is never as annoying as Meredith or Ryan, but even so she never really manages to make Celestine a sympathetic character. This, perhaps, is the fault of the scriptwriters rather than Goddard herself. Celestine is too coldly calculating and too willing to go along with Joseph's dishonest schemes, only abandoning him when she realises that Georges offers her better social prospects. This characterisation would not have mattered had the intention been to make the film as a satire, but it seems to have been intended more as a romantic comedy and does not really work as such. Probably the best performance comes from Francis Lederer as the saturnine villain Joseph.
Mirbeau's story is a reasonably good one, and I could certainly imagine a good film being made from it, either as a comedy or as a drama. (I have never seen Luis Buñuel's version from the sixties). I gather than Renoir's film enjoyed a certain amount of success in 1946, but like a lot of comedies from the era it has not stood up well to the passage of time and today seems very dated. 4/10
I watched the film because it was directed by Jean Renoir, who has the reputation of being a heavyweight director, but actually it comes across as fairly frothy, lightweight stuff. Perhaps Renoir was asked to direct it because it was about his native country. I have never read Mirbeau's novel but from the film I suspect that his objective may have been to satirise the pretensions of the French Third Republic, which for all its talk of "égalité" was not in fact particularly egalitarian and remained as much a land of masters and servants as any other country in 19th century Europe. (Unlike the first two Republics, it did not come into being as the result of a revolution. It was originally intended as an interim government pending the restoration of the monarchy after the Franco-Prussian War, but became the permanent form of government by default when the politicians failed to agree on a candidate for the throne). These political considerations, however, were probably lost on an American audience in the forties; political satire can lose much of its point when it is set several decades in the past, especially in a foreign country.
The film remains light and frothy even though two characters end up being killed. In both cases this seems like justifiable homicide, although in the first case this was probably not intended. The victim of this killing is Captain Mauger, played by Burgess Meredith as a manically hyperactive old fool, and the most irritating character in the film, a position for which there is considerable competition. Mauger's main challenger for this title is Irene Ryan's Louise, the family's other maid. It is said that there are some species of bat whose squeaks are too high-pitched for the human ear to hear, and Ryan's performance as the hysterically silly Louise shows that this can be true of people as well as bats.
Paulette Goddard is today best remembered as the third Mrs Charlie Chaplin, although she was an important star in her own right during the forties. Here she is never as annoying as Meredith or Ryan, but even so she never really manages to make Celestine a sympathetic character. This, perhaps, is the fault of the scriptwriters rather than Goddard herself. Celestine is too coldly calculating and too willing to go along with Joseph's dishonest schemes, only abandoning him when she realises that Georges offers her better social prospects. This characterisation would not have mattered had the intention been to make the film as a satire, but it seems to have been intended more as a romantic comedy and does not really work as such. Probably the best performance comes from Francis Lederer as the saturnine villain Joseph.
Mirbeau's story is a reasonably good one, and I could certainly imagine a good film being made from it, either as a comedy or as a drama. (I have never seen Luis Buñuel's version from the sixties). I gather than Renoir's film enjoyed a certain amount of success in 1946, but like a lot of comedies from the era it has not stood up well to the passage of time and today seems very dated. 4/10