What Was the Point of Making the Husband Jewish?

Yes, it was intentional. Titles used to be inherited - in France, one also had to be Catholic. At some point, not only in France, but in Britain, titles could be pretty much be bought if you could afford to buy the estate. Perhaps this was another rule that no longer applied in the games of the upper classes in France. Also, perhaps this is why Nora Grégor was cast as Christine - here was an Austrian princess (although royalty in Austria had ended about 20 years earlier) in real life, married to a man who was sought by the Nazis for assassination, playing a character who was married to a Jewish man, who, in real life, would have also been targeted for death by the Nazis had Dalio not been able to escape France.

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What was Jean Renoir trying to say? I recall a scene in which the servants make some gossiping remarks about his ancestry. Is he even supposed to be completely Jewish?

According to John Kobal in his book, "Top 100 Films" the casting was done just before shooting. "Renoir also ended up taking actors entirely wrong for the roles he had written, and so was forced to reconceive characters at the last minute. (One of the alterations would later bring down the wrath of the anti-semetic French public. Marcel Dalio, a well-known Jewish actor, was cast as the Marquis de la Chesnaye, so Renoir provided in the script that the Marquis has a Jewish mother. It was all the proof the anti-semites needed that French society had been contaminated by the Jews.)

Oh Lord, you gave them eyes but they cannot see...

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