Trivia

It is sometimes said that this was the only film Jean Renoir made entirely inside a studio.

Octave Mirbeau's 1905 novel caused a sensation in France and was widely condemned by censorship bodies. This film makes several alterations to the plot, making the wealthy Lanlaire family more eccentric than kinky and bringing the child-murderer to justice at the end.

While wrongly billed as Renoir's last American film (there were several later films of note, including The Woman on the Beach), this pleasant film is a far cry from his early masterpieces - like Rules of The Game, The Grand illusion and The Crime of M. Lang. It's primarily notable for the small things it reveals after close examination. Paulette Goddard, in her mid-30s at the time, still manages to show the smiling presence and nuanced emotions that so charmed Charlie Chaplin; at one point, stumbling while she tries to balance a tray with a cake on it, she makes moves that are pure Chaplin. The cast is a study in the history of filmmaking: Dame Judith Anderson, whose credits range from Rebecca to Star Trek III (and once toured with a theater company performing the lead role in Hamlet); Irene Ryan would achieve fame decades later as one of the stars of The Beverly Hillbillies; and Burgess Meredith - who co-produced and co-wrote - played in hundreds of films and television productions, from the original 1939 Of Mice and Men through Rocky I, II, III, and V.