Diary of a Chambermaid Blu-ray Review
Dear Diary: SOS.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, March 1, 2013
There's more than a little (perhaps) unintended irony when Paulette Goddard, playing ambitious servant Celestine in
the 1946 Jean Renoir film
The Diary of a Chambermaid, confides in scullery maid Louise (Irene Ryan) that she's
sick
of working for others and will seduce the next man she meets, but only if he has money. Love? That's for fools, at
least in Celestine's world view. But money—
that's the key to happiness. It's ironic for Goddard managed to
land at least three husbands (or quasi-husbands, as the case may be) whose personal wealth and connections
definitely benefited the actress in both personal and professional terms. Goddard's early life is swathed in mystery, a
mystery only encouraged by the actress herself who repeatedly fudged her birth year (it varies by over a decade in
different accounts), birth
place and even her parentage (Goddard was sued—unsuccessfully—by her estranged
biological father when she claimed he was
not her biological father). Depending on
which birth year is
subscribed to, Goddard might have been as young as
eleven when she married for the first time (this only
argues for a different birth year, of course, as it's more likely that she was at least sixteen, which is of course still
incredibly young).
That marriage quickly ended in divorce but left Goddard the then staggering settlement of
several hundred thousand dollars, an amount which really could have set her up for life out of the public eye. But
Goddard was nothing if not ambitious (rather like Celestine). Through a rather circuitous series of events, she
ultimately ended up dating (and according to some events, secretly marrying) Charlie Chaplin, who gave the long
struggling actress her breakthrough role in
Modern Times. Goddard had at least mustered her way on to the B-list, if not the actual A-list, and not
content to sit idly by while Chaplin planned his next film, set out on a number of other projects, most notably her nearly
successful lobbying effort to play Scarlett O'Hara in
Gone with the Wind. After making
The Great Dictator with Chaplin in 1940, the couple split two years thereafter, which also
seemed to precipitate Goddard's slow but steady decline as a major film actress. After her film career had largely
dissipated, Goddard ended up marrying celebrated author Erich Maria Remarque (
All Quiet on the Western Front), who
upon his death left Goddard yet
another fortune (including a huge art collection) which allowed Goddard to
spend her remaining years as a regular on the New York City social scene.
But sandwiched in between her relationships with Chaplin and Remarque came a perhaps more unexpected marriage—
to Burgess Meredith, beloved by many for his supporting turn in
Rocky, but also the erstwhile Penguin from the 1960's campfest television version of
Batman. Long before
Meredith indelibly imprinted his nasal rasp and bizarre laugh on an entire generation of kids (and, frankly, adults) in
Batman, he had racked up considerable (and highly lauded) credits on Broadway and in films, and he was in fact
thought of as something of triple threat, working regularly not just as an actor, but also as a director and writer.
Meredith had actually worked with Goddard before their marriage in the 1940 film
Second Chorus, but he went
on to produce (and in the case of
The Diary of a Chambermaid, co-write) two more films which offered nice parts
for Goddard (the other is 1948's
On Our Merry Way, a
portmanteau of comedy bits).
Jean Renoir had already proven himself to be one of the keenest observers of class differences in his two classics
The Rules of the Game and
La Grande Illusion, but, alas,
lightning was not to strike thrice, at least not with regard to
The Diary of a Chambermaid. Based on a 1900
novel
which indeed exploited the petty dysfunctions of the ruling class, it would have seemed to have been a near perfect
project for Renoir (as indeed it also seemed for Luis Buñuel, who remade the film in 1964), but perhaps due to the
tonally imbalanced screenplay, the film is a hodgepodge of ideas and styles.
At
one moment almost broad comedy, at the next verging on Grand Guignol, this is a
Chambermaid who doesn't
know which "room" in the house is under her proper purview.
We meet Celestine (Paulette Goddard) and scullery maid Louise (Irene Ryan, future Granny of
The Beverly
Hillbillies) as they arrive to take new jobs at the Lanlaire Estate. They are met by officious (and actually
vicious) valet Joseph (Francis Lederer), who makes no bones about finding Louise too unattractive to even be
considered for employment. That sets Celestine off on a tirade, and Joseph relents. Celestine soon discovers she may
have not made the wisest decision in sticking up for Louise, not due to any fault of Louise's, but due to the fact the the
Lanlaire house is a roiling pit of Freudian excesses.
The putative head of the household, Captain Lanlaire (Reginald Owen), is a henpecked victim of his overbearing wife
(Judith Anderson). Madame Lanlaird seems to have a rather Oedipal relationship with her estranged son Georges
(Hurd Hatfield), and it turns out she has actually hired Celestine to be Georges' lover, in an attempt to "heal" the boy of
his emotional problems, problems which seem to stem squarely from his relationship with his Mother. In the meantime,
Celestine is fighting off advances of varying degrees from the Captain, Joseph and a nutty neighbor named Captain
Mauger (Burgess Meredith, in a completely peculiar Walter Brennan impersonation).
The film is all over the map from both a subject matter standpoint as well as tone. Renoir attempts to deal with the
class issues that were such important parts of some of his other features, drawing distinctions between the patrician
Lanlairds and the working class, but there's no real sympathy for any of the supposed lowly characters, with the
possible exception of Louise. Joseph is a scoundrel (and ultimately much more than that), but perhaps most
devastating to the film's effectiveness, Celestine is hardly someone the typical audience member is going to root for.
She's conniving, manipulative and an out and out coquette, at least some of the time. She's also prone to screaming
uncontrollably when violence breaks out.
Goddard is fine in the role, and has some excellent moments, and the varied performers are all screwed in rather tightly
to their typecast roles. Anderson is the uptight matron, Owen is the addlepated elder, Ryan is the fussy and neurotic
dowdy woman, and Hatfield is the tamped down, emotionally distant young man. That leaves Lederer, who simply
eviscerates the other actors with his steely persona and disturbingly violent mien. This film may claim to be about the
chambermaid, but the smart money is on the valet, for it's Joseph who ends up being the most unforgettable character
in this otherwise pretty turgid melodrama.
