Tagebuch einer Kammerzofe

The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946) was directed by the great Jean Renoir. This is an U.S. film, although the action was set in France, and directed by a French director.

The movie is set in rural France in 1885. As the title suggests, a new chambermaid has arrived at a mansion of an eccentric couple. (Actually, almost everyone in the movie is eccentric to a greater or lesser degree.)

The person who's not eccentric, but totally evil, is the valet, Joseph. Francis Lederer portrayed Joseph, who is evil to the core. He looks like the villain that he is. (Actually, in one film. he played Count Dracula).

The reason to see is film is to watch Paulette Goddard at work. She was the classic Hollywood beauty of her time. And, 70 years later, she is still a classic Hollywood beauty. Better than that, she could act! Goddard plays Célestine, the chambermaid, whose only path out of lower-class drudgery is to marry a rich man. How this plays out is the plot of the film.

Renoir was possibly the greatest film director of the 20th Century. However, this movie is one of his minor films. Renoir does crowd scenes well, but he can't take his eyes off Goddard, and neither can we.

This movie has an anemic IMDB rating of 6.7. It's not a great film, but I think it's better than that. We saw it on DVD, and it worked well enough. Be sure to see it if you're a Renoir fan or a Goddard fan. Otherwise, I'd suggest Buñuel's 1964 version, with Jeanne Moreau.

France's most famous director, Jean Renoir, had to go to America to make his film of French author Octave Mirbeau's novel "The Diary of a Chambermaid". It was adapted for the screen by the actor Burgess Meredith, mainly as a vehicle for his then wife Paulette Goddard who plays the chambermaid Celestine who uses her wiles on the various men in the household where she is employed. It's a lovely performance in a film full of good performances. Others in the cast include Meredith himself, Hurd Hatfield, Reginald Owen and Judith Andereson but it's Francis Lederer as the malevolent manservant Joseph who walks off with the movie.

It's really a film of two halves. The early farcial elements seem overworked, (I know it's a film about eccentrics but such broad strokes hardly suit Renoir). However, the darkness that overwhelms the second half of the picture is magnificently handled by the director and is actually quite shocking. This is a very different film from the one Bunuel made in 1964 and perhaps all the better for it.

As Paulette Goddard plies her "magic," things don't always go as planned. She is a gold digger and doesn't hesitate to settle for less attractive if there is money on the way. What happens is a series of abutments that hold up the process. For me the charm of he movie was the use of some great character actors. A young Burgess Meredith and Irene Ryan. It's one of those films that is ultimately forgettable but has some nice moments.

"Life is life. From now on I'm going to fight, and I'm going to fight hard, and I don't care who gets hurt, just so as it's not me."

"Don't be afraid of me. You and I are alike, maybe not in looks, but underneath we are the same."

"How does it feel to be in love?

• It changes all the time."

"Plans can get you into trouble."

"We are not used to kissing in public.

• Not in public. Are you ashamed? You shouldn't be ashamed of love. You should be proud. Take him in your arms, hold him, kiss him, embrace him!"

"Where are you going?

• Flying to the moon." 😂

"The more I'm beaten, the stronger I get."

The Diary of a Chambermaid is a transitional film in the development of Renoir's lesser known stylistic system. Braudy would later distinguish Renoir's two systems as being tied to theater and realism respectively (although there have been compelling arguments about these categories being either reductive or simply misnomers). Goddard is the focus of the story (much in the same way Renoir later uses Magnani, Arnoul and Bergman). The camera tracks her action, her closeups are one-shot, there are alternating shot scales in single scenes to emphasize her character's psychological reaction to events, studio exteriors help idealize the framing of her screen personality and high/low angle shots purvey her psychological perspective on group dynamics. Celestine (Goddard) has an ambiguity to her motivation that heightens psychological identification. It is unclear as to whether she sees the world divided into classes or sexes, or both. The ending is a happy one, and the politics is further subverted through jovial and emotionally-charged highly-individualized characters. Non-diegetic soundtrack is employed to increase distinctions in the emotional responses of different characters. Depth of field is at the service of Celestine's staging while obstructions in the mise-en-scene become incorporated into the plot. In this respect, the camera is not an unobtrusive one. There is an inconsistency in the use of stylistics, where on one hand reframing pans are fully at the service of psychological identification and privilege of the transcendental subject position while the long take mobile framing of the July 14th celebration reminisce on M.Lange, Illusion and Regle. Diary is a melodrama with comedic elements to take the edges off, but when the master of the house reads in the morning paper "another woman murdered in Paris, another woman cut to pieces" there is no doubt that Renoir is infusing a consideration for the plight of women in a misogynist society. This was very important to him and perhaps the dark undertones of this film have something to say about the repression he experienced working in Hollywood for the war. How Burgess Meredith factors into all that remains to be seen.