Introduction: Seeing Time in the image plane

Prefiguring Deleuze's own emphasis on the theatricality that infuses Renoir's settings, Leo Braudy states:

Previous chapters have sought to avoid reducing Renoir's worlds to theatres, arguing that a full appreciation of Renoir's mise en scène demands that we examine the counterpoint through which the surcroît de théâtralité and geographical setting (in its physical and social aspects) interact expressively. However, Braudy's and Deleuze's comments are pertinent in the case of Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), The Golden Coach (1952), and Eléna et les hommes (1956): although all three are costume dramas – a genre described by Susan Hayward ‘in its broadest sense as [films] set in an historical period that features characters dressed in costumes pertaining to that era’ – any general sense of geographical place and chronological point in time is secondary to the theatricality foregrounded by various combinations of costume design, set design, camerawork, music, and performance. It is worth noting that the emphatic theatricality that distinguishes each of the three films from Renoir's previous output and the costume-drama genre was not always a deliberate choice on Renoir's part. Years after its release, Renoir stated that ‘Diary of a Chambermaid corresponds with one of my anti-realist crises [crises anti-réalistes].’ Renoir further elaborated: