Paulette Godard has never been more than the faintest blip on my personal radar but that, of course, may be my problem rather than hers. Her particular allure and/or charm has always eluded me and I've never accused her of being anything more than competent in the Acting department. That out of the way I have to say she makes a reasonable fist out of Celestine, the gold-digging chambermaid who fetches up in one of those eccentric households that are the backbone of Fiction, Theatre and Silver Screen. In something of a twist on a prevailing trend expatriate Jean Renoir opted to shoot a French story in Hollywood though he would, of course, also shoot American subjects there along with Max Ophuls who clearly became infected with the same bug as Renoir and made Letter From An Unknown Woman there two years later. The semi-classic novel which had also been dramatised for the stage was given a new lick of paint by actor Burgess Meredith - married to Godard at the time - who, as Producer, cast himself as the elderly Captain rather than the love interest, no doubt in an effort to display another of the strings on his bow. It's a strange melange and the presence of Judith Anderson should be sufficient to alert the cognoscenti to the tone - this time around she encourages a servant to seduce her son - and overall this is a movie that needs to be viewed more than once in order to formulate a balanced opinion.
Review of The Diary of a Chambermaid
