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Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Andres-Camara It has a touch that seems like the actors are fooling around. Total, not seriously, that's all. Especially towards the end. At first it is fine but it is losing bellows and as is customary in Renoir, it mixes the genres in such a way that it does not make any sense.Spoiler:I do not know if it has ulterior motives although it seems to me that yes and I do not like anything, I speak of incest. It is clear that horns are spoken.The neighbor, is not that character unbearable? Always jumping.Why does Paulette want to go with Francis? That man is scary. He has not felt anything for him in the whole movie. For money? But he has the son and on top he gets along with him.The ending, it seemed a bad movie of laughter, could not believe that it had degenerated so much the film. I will not go into technical sections. Or I like none.In the end I did not know if they were laughing at me or what

roslein-674-874556 Octave Mirbeau's brilliant, chilling novel was written more than 100 years ago, but its sordid, sexy, near-surrealistic mood and story could not possibly be given a worthy treatment in 1946, and certainly not in an America still subject to the Hays code. This film takes only some of the incidents in the episodic novel and tries to make the story into an eccentric romantic comedy. But, minus the mood and ambiance of the novel, the result is awkward and odd. An important aspect of the novel, anti-semitism (the book was written when France was torn apart by the Dreyfus case) is completely left out, and, instead of perversion and cruelty, Celestine experiences, from her employers, only annoyance. The performances are lightweight, except for Francis Lederer (always good at gentlemanly brutes) as the sinister valet. The film's only moments of horror occur when he indulges his talent, and taste, for discreet violence.Nothing the great Renoir directed is without interest, and this Diary certainly has moments of beauty and affectionate comedy. But a much more accurate adaptation was Bunuel's in 1964. He left in the anti- semitism, and his own sexy-sadistic-surrealistic mood was a perfect match for Mirbeau's. One moment in this story reminded me of a similar incident, one of my favourites in a Bunuel film. The family for whom the chambermaid works lives next to a peppery, eccentric old man who demonstrates his loathing for his neighbours by throwing rocks through the panes of their greenhouse. In The Exterminating Angel, the partygoers are frightened when a brick is thrown through the window. The host calms them with "It's nothing. Just a passing Jew." Priceless!

mark.waltz A little less than 100 after the French Revolution, the aristocracy targeted by the peasants are still not completely gone. During this era of Napolean III towards the end of the French monarchy (as ruled by an Italian), one family is desperate to keep its treasures and status of its once great name. That is the Lanlaire family, headed by domineering Judith Anderson who totally controls her husband Reginald Owen and has caused her son Hurd Hatfield to run away. The addition of two new servants (Paulette Goddard and Irene Ryan) is the opening trumpet blast towards their downfall. The impending return of Hatfield stirs Anderson into action: she wants attractive maid Goddard to seduce her son so he will remain under her roof and ultimately under her control. Francis Lederer plays the butler who is equally domineering and is also obviously dangerous. Goddard refuses to take any guff from Lederer, while Ryan ("Beverly Hillbilly's" beloved Granny) is an all-out scaredy cat. Next door are the strange Burgess Meredith and his obsessed companion, Florence Bates, who is immediately furious over Meredith's interest in Goddard. Meredith has an obsession with breaking the glass in his snooty neighbor's greenhouse and is also quite mad. There is a scene where he accidentally kills a pet squirrel that is quite disturbing.As Hatfield and Goddard become friendlier, Lederer gets more obsessed with Goddard, whose character Celestine is a follow-up to the same year's "Kitty". But unlike the mainstream "Kitty", "Diary of a Chambermaid" is a very strange movie, like a parallel universe where nothing seems right and everybody is acting mad like it was the norm. Owen's character is only feisty when Anderson is off the screen (until the very end) and of course, he too has a hankering for Celestine. Hatfield, quite different than his role in "The Picture of Dorian Gray", seems to take brooding to the excess here, but watching him come out of his shell with Celestine around is interestingly portrayed. Ryan shrieks more than Una O'Connor throughout the film so she can only be described as shrill. (It was good practice for her hysterical crying of "Jed!" on "BH" 20 years later.) As for Anderson, she starts off fine, understated, dignified and cool. But as we see the real motives of this messed-up mother, Anderson brings out all of her theatrics. She's dressed to the nines and spouts her lines dramatically as if she was just getting into her soon-to-be famous stage role of "Medea". Her character's obsession with the family's precious china is hysterical. Goddard has some very strange lines and her interactions with everybody around her appears as if she was spouting her lines as if they were Shakespeare's. In her interactions with off-screen hubby Burgess Meredith, it's almost amusing to think of them as a couple. He's obviously made up to play this psychotic neighbor and was apparently quite dashing off stage. Francis Lederer chews the scenery even more than Anderson so much that one expects him to bite into the secret treasures of Anderson's family. The usually sedate Florence Bates reads her lines with such hyperism she seems ready to have a heart attack at any minute.One must take films like this with a grain of salt. These period Gothic dramas are hit or miss. Hardly any of them are worthy of awards; They are simply pure escapism that post War audiences needed to see. Now that Europe was practically in ruins, seeing it as it was before the end of the monarchies was a hopeful sign that they could rebuild.

allyjack (WARNING - CONTAINS MILD SPOILER) The film is first of all a charming, well-shaded portrait of the foibles and oddities of a complex household, reveling in such easy diversions as neighbour Meredith's eccentric feud with the master of the house, and initially casting Goddard as a straightforward gold-digger - her performance is beautifully ambiguous in the way she might or might or not be genuine in her response to her various suitors. Later (and not entirely smoothly; some scenes, and the thing as a whole, feel a bit forced and/or abbreviated) it turns into a quivering, troubled parable on unravelling patriarchal and political structures - the scene where the household carries out its bizarre, defiant, hopeless ritual of anti-revolutionism is amazing. Lederer's mutation into a murdering capitalist is a bit overstated; as is the underlining of Goddard and Hatfield's rebellion across class lines by having him triumph over a debilitating illness, but all is justified by the film's superbly orchestrated crowd scene climax, which has the chaotic sweep of real history and perfectly places the human melodrama in its proper context.