The Diary of a Chambermaid *** (1946, Paulette Goddard, Burgess Meredith, Hurd Hatfield, Reginald Owen, Judith Anderson) – Classic Movie Review 8736

Jean Renoir’s 1946 Hollywood version of Octave Mirbeau’s bourgeois-knocking novel about a grasping chambermaid hovers uncertainly between burlesque and tragedy but gives the performers the eagerly grabbed chance for a field day of brio acting.

Paulette Goddard is brashly winning as the maid Célestine, Reginald Owen and Judith Anderson score as her master and mistress Captain Lanlaire and Madame Lanlaire, and Hurd Hatfield is suitably creepy as the son, young Georges Lanlaire. There is room too for Burgess Meredith (who also adapts the novel and is the film’s joint producer with Goddard and Benedict Bogeaus) as the captain neighbour Captain Mauger, Irene Ryan as the scullery wench Louise and Francis Lederer as the strange valet Joseph.

When Célestine takes a new job in the country with the Lanlaire family, she decides to seduce a wealthy man. Her beauty attracts the eye of Captain Mauger, Georges Lanlaire, and Joseph.

The film also adapts a play version of the novel, by André Heuzé, André de Lorde Thielly Norès, and unfortunately Renoir cannot get rid of the stale air of theatricality from the adaptation, struggling to make it cinematic. But Burgess Meredith’s screenplay is often agreeably sharp and witty, and Mirbeau’s sour view of the world is amusingly expressed. The Diary of a Chambermaid may be a Hollywood film, but its sensibilities stay rightly on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Also in the cast are Florence Bates, Almira Sessions, Egon Brecher, Sumner Getchell, Ben Hall, Jack Perry, Joe Ploski and Harry Semels.

It runs 86 minutes and 91 minutes in the director’s cut.

The Diary of a Chambermaid is directed by Jean Renoir, runs 86 minutes, is made by Camden and Benedict Bogeaus Production, is released by United Artists, is written by Burgess Meredith, based on Octave Mirbeau’s novel, is shot in black and white by Lucien N Andriot, is produced by Benedict Bogeaus, Burgess Meredith and Paulette Goddard, is scored by Michel Michelet and is designed by Eugène Lourié.

It is remade by Luis Buñuel in 1964 as The Diary of a Chambermaid [Le Journal d’une Femme de Chambre] with Jeanne Moreau.

Goddard and Meredith were married from 21 May 1944 to 8 June 1949 (divorced). Meredith was named an unfriendly witness by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the early 1950s, when his studio work ended. Otto Preminger helped restore his film career. Meredith was an environmentalist and opponent of the Vietnam War.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8736

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