the upstarts
by Douglas Messerli
Burgess Meredith (screenplay, based
on a fiction by Octave Mirbeau and a play by André Heuzé, André de Lorde and
Thielly Nores), Jean Renoir (director) The
Diary of a Chambermaid / 1946
I must admit, the first time I saw
this film—one of the great Jean Renoir’s from his US period films—having
already seen Luis Buñuel’s 1964 version, I was somewhat disappointed. While
Buñuel accentuated the bizarre and dark aspects of Mirbeau’s eerie fiction,
Renoir seemed to be trying the convert the perverse series of events that occur
to an ambitious chambermaid, into a comedy. The casting of the light-hearted
Paulette Goddard as Célestine, and the overt comedy actors Burgess Meredith
(who had also written the screenplay) and Irene Ryan—both long-time American
studio character actors—appeared to remove this work from any of the
horror-like elements of the original. Renoir’s version, as most critics have
agreed, looks forward to his later works in which artifice and theatricality
definitely dominated. Moreover, The Diary
of a Chambermaid often has the look and feel of a studio product. The
French, in particular, perceived this Renoir work, despite the master’s
reputation, as the product of an exile who had rejected the very qualities, the
perverse, satiric humor, that the French literary work had made famous.
Seeing it again on Netflix just this
morning, however, I begin to see the logic of Renoir’s direction, which
parallels the determined, pre-feminist young Célestine with the wonderful comic
posturings of Louis (Irene Ryan)—who cannot even walk across the room without
the bearing the weight of her sense of worthlessness—and the hilarious volleys
of the mad-man neighbor, Captain Mauger (Burgess Meredith), who not only hates
the Lanlaires, literary throwing rocks at their glass houses (the gardening
sheds), but is proud of his ability to eat anything and everything. Captain
Lainaire’s (Reginald Owen) occasional rebellions against life at the Lainaire
estate, moreover, adds to the fun. They are perfect foils for the young Célestine’s
innocent, yet ambitious attempts to move up the social ladder while
simultaneously remaining in her position as a seasoned chambermaid.
Throughout much of the film, the villain appears to be Madame Lanlaire
(the terrifying Judith Anderson, a few years after her own frightening
portrayal of a serving woman in Hitchcock’s Rebecca.)
For much of Renoir’s film, the light-hearted, flirtatious chambermaid
brilliantly plays out her mobile aspirations against these exaggerated types.
The other figure of her world, the valet
Joseph (Francis Lederer), hovers in the background. To Louise and others Célestine
jokes that he is an “undertaker,” but his slavish obedience to Madame Lanlaire,
and his refusal to reveal himself, seems to render him basically ineffectual.
If, like Célestine, we blanch a bit when his method of killing geese is
described—he pokes them in the neck with a long needle to prevent their loss of
blood—he remains, nonetheless, a valet, something both Célestine and Madame
Lanlaire insist is permanent in his personality.
The return home, however, of the
long-absent son, Georges, changes everything, as suddenly the monstrous Madame
attempts to warm up to her chambermaid, having purchased expensive Paris gowns
for her, demanding that she change her hair to fit current Paris fashions. Célestine
remodels herself in Madame’s image with both delight and a great deal of
hesitation, not unlike Madeline’s acceptance of Scottie’s remaking of her
image, a few years later, in Hitchcock’s Vertigo;
and at the same time, the film shifts, gradually transforming itself from a
kind of gold-digger comedy into a story of almost surreal proportions.
Despite all the of the enforced
“acting,” Célestine proceeds to fall in love with Georges, even though his
reaction seems inexplicably contradictory, as one moment he signals desire and
responds to her gentle ministrations, and the next rejects the girl as an agent
of his mother’s suffocating love. What the film reveals, but seldom speaks of,
is that Georges is dying of tuberculosis; accordingly, he loses energy in the
very moments of great stimulation and fears, worried, we later discover, that
the young chambermaid cannot dare kiss him for fear of infection. That Renoir
keeps this important aspect of their relationship covert helps to create a
tension that the young, head over-heels-in-love girl, cannot explain. Does he
love her or hate her? Does he, so manipulated by his overbearing mother, love
women at all?
Accordingly, Célestine is not only confused, but angered, as she is
forced to look, in her aspirations for a way out and servitude and assurance of
wealth, to the elderly neighbor or, in an even more frightening plot
development, to accept the attentions of Joseph, who has secretly bought a bar
in Cherbourg where he intends to implant his new wife as a draw for soldiers
and sailors. Like Célestine, he is attracted to the Lanlaire vault of silver
and other treasures they bring out only once a year to celebrate against the French revolution. Joseph sees
the chambermaid, in her plottings and desire for upward mobility, to be of same
kind of person he is; and, in some respects, he is right. Except she knows, in
her heart, that he is perceiving only the worst of her instead of good girl,
despite her misconceived aspirations, she has always attempted to be.
Unlike Buñuel’s version, where the valet is an ogre whom the chambermaid
attempts to reveal to the society at large, Joseph is a clever manipulator,
willing to fulfill her demands of real cash with by any means available. When
he is overheard by Madame Lanlaire in his plots to steal their secret cache, he
determines to find another source, through the robbery of their feisty
neighbor, Captain Mauger, who has money hidden away in his house.
After having locked up his
housekeeper-mother-lover, Rose (Florence Bates), Mauger has run off to the
small neighboring town to meet with Célestine, where he plots to marry her in
Paris. Returning home for his money, he is met by Joseph and murdered. Renoir’s
light-hearted work has suddenly turned sour, as everything that was light and
playful has become a desperate fight to the death. When Joseph reveals that he
has raised the money, Célestine suddenly perceives, through the appearance of
Rose, the criminal acts Joseph has committed, he, on his part, insisting that
she is equally involved in the crime. The sudden shock of her unintentional
entwinement in the murder tumbles Renoir’s film over a kind of cinematic cliff
where what has been desire and flirtatiousness shift into deep metaphysical
guilt, perhaps turning Renoir’s work, in some sense, into a more horrifying
world than Buñuel’s. What follows takes the movie almost into the world of the
absurd.
A Lanlaire tradition is to have a
late-night drink, in their anti-celebration of the Revolution, with the
servants. The servants, including Célestine and Joseph, are toasted at the very
moment when all emotions have come to the surface, including Georges', when he
once again is made to face off with Célestine. Joseph announces that he is
leaving—with Célestine, to which Georges responds with total disbelief. Can she
really love this monstrous man? Demanding that she kiss Joseph to demonstrate
her true love, Georges realizes, as she springs from the room, that she is not
at all in love with Joseph, and chases after her.
In one of the most disgusting pieces of
human brokering, Joseph bickers with Madame Lanlaire over their cache of their
silverware, plates, tureens, and even snuff boxes (studded with rubies and
diamonds), in return for his promise to take Célestine away, in order to leave
Georges in her arms. At first, we believe that she will choose the meaningless
objects even over son, as she willingly gives up only a few tureens, a few
tokens. He insists upon it all, she attempting to negotiate a split. He wins.
The battle between the two is one of the most devastating satires of the linked
interest of the wealthy and the aspirant upstarts ever committed to screen.
Having won everything he has sought, Joseph now descends to the potting sheds,
to where the real lovers, Georges and Célistine have recovered themselves.
Murder is clearly in the air, as Joseph beats Georges, Célestine
intervening, again and again. Yet each time Georges, the natural weakling,
rebounds to fight another bout. He loses, and his life is saved only by Célestine’s
acceptance of Joseph’s demand to go along with him. Beating the horse, Joseph
moves toward the station, but is stopped by the celebratory revolutionary
crowds, who, once again, are happy to see Célestine among their midst. Taking
advantage of the situation, the former chambermaid abandons the cart to offer
up all their silver lucre to everyone at the event: she is no longer, clearly,
interested in its financial worth or even its sentimental value. The crowd
pushes forward, further impeding Joseph’s escape. When Georges shows up once
more, a battle ensures, where Joseph attempts to kill, yet again, with the long
needle he has stuck into the necks of geese and Captain Mauger. The crowd
finally captures the villain; we are not sure whether or not he is dead. In a
strange sense, the whole scene has appeared to be related somewhat to the crowd
reactions in the movie Frankenstein,
having finally captured the monstrous beast.
The final scene restores the film's comic viewpoint, as leaving the
territory via train, Georges tells Célestine how to close her diary—with the
wedding vow. Even if he has somewhat regained his health, however, we know he
is doomed, given the intensity of his illness, to live only a few years. But
then, it is clear, the worthy Célestine will inherit all that Lanlaire wealth.
Los Angeles, September 4, 2012
Reprinted from International Cinema Review (September 2012).
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