User Reviews

I am surprised that the film has been often mentioned as Bunuel's minor film or even the closest to failure he'd come. I found it excellent - dark and cynical, funny and thought provoking. It's got everything I love Bunuel's films for – sinister atmosphere, darker than dark humor, the strange characters living lives of sexual, religious, and social repressions. Jeanne Moreau, one of the greatest actresses France ever produced, as a titular chambermaid, Celestine adds to the film's many pleasures. Bunuel and his screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière have transported the Octave Mirbeau's novel from the 19th century to the 1930s – the epoch of Bunuel's first sojourn in France where he made his first two films. Celestine, a sexy and cool Parisian takes a job as a chambermaid to a bourgeois, provincial family with enough skeletons in the closet for a small cemetery. The irritable and arrogant wife is frigid, her husband (hilarious turn by Michel Piccoli) chases anything in skirt and her nice and well mannered father is a shoe-fetishist. There is also a neighbor, an ex-officer who hates Monteils and loves damaging and breaking his neighbors' things and property.

"Diary of a Chambermaid" (among many things) was able to show the absolute evil on the raise in the character of Joseph, the farm-laborer, who is sexually attracted to Celestine, a cruel, cold-blooded rapist-murderer and the fascist in such subtle yet scary way that Bertolucci should have watched and studied it for his "1900".

There may be those who would describe this as Rules Of The Game Lite dealing as it does with the mores of French society in the 1930s but one crucial difference is that Renoir made his film AT THE TIME whereas Bunuel was working a quarter of a century later. It's never really explained - unless, of course, I missed an explanation - why an intelligent, sophisticated Parisienne Celestine (Jeanne Moreau) would choose to bury herself in the French countryside in a menial position. Whatever the reason the fact that she does so gives Bunuel the chance to take his customary jaundiced view of the bourgeois household that serves as a microcosm for France as a whole and the world at large. The household is like a fruitcakes convention boasting a frigid wife, a priapic husband a fetishist grandfather and a brutal predator/murderer gamekeeper/handyman. Symbols abound not least the snails suckling on the bare legs of the murdered child, followed closely by the garbage thrown consistently into the grounds of the house by a retired army officer and academics and pseuds could get hours of mileage out of that one given the Petain/Vichy government waiting in the wings to dish up garbage by the plateful to a humbled nation. Moreau, as is to be expected, turns in a fine performance as do all the principals but I doubt if even the most devoted Bunuel buffs would want to return to it again and again.

Luis Bunuel's Diary of a Chambermaid places a stone-faced Jeanne Moreau in a country house filled with perverts and watches as she drops her moral standards to inconceivable lows. To Moreau's chambermaid, it's better to suppress loathing, keep things neat and support the status quo, even in the face of the worst atrocities in human history, than to take a stand and risk repercussions.

The film begins as a typical Bunuel tale of quirky perverts (Jean Ozenne's foot fetishist, Francoise Lugagne's coldly domineering lady of the house) with a blank at its center, Jeanne Moreau's oblique, vaguely disdainful chambermaid. The cinematography adds to our sense of Moreau's opacity by avoiding closeups of her for the entire film. As Moreau indulges her perverted employers in the interest of self-preservation and personal gain, Bunuel throws successively greater moral hurdles in front of her, culminating in the murder of a child, and she stoops to accept each one.

If you think that overlooking a brutal child murderer is the worst Moreau can do, just wait - the hulking, monstrous Georges Geret's reflexive anti-Semitism, hinted at in earlier dialogue, snaps into focus in the film's final scenes, which directly correlate Moreau's willingness to lower her standards with France's surrender to the genocidal Nazis in World War II.

A chilling and brutal - if emotionally distant - sermon, part anguished howl and part self-satisfied wink, the film is one of Bunuel's very best.

Diary of a Chambermaid opened the later French period of Luis Bunuel (1964-1977) during which he made his most well known films such as Belle de Jour, That Obscure Object of Desire and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Diary of a Chambermaid is another of his attacks on the bourgeoisie but what differs it from the rest is its genuine darkness and pessimism. It's a film about fight of the classes, fascism and a satire of the decay of the French society.

Set in early 1930's; a new chambermaid, Céléstine (Jeanne Moreau) arrives to the Monteil mansion. Soon she gets to know the bizarre family full of odd characters; Madame Monteil who seems to be more interested in taking care of their family's furniture than her husband, Monsier Monteil who isn't interested in anything but hunting and Madame's father who is a shoe-fetishist.

Céléstine is in between of two worlds; the city and the country, the working class and the bourgeoisie. She's not settled in; so she's not part of the country nor the city as she isn't part of the bourgeoisie or the working class. She doesn't really know where she is, she's a very elusive figure; so she is in the move all the time. Each time the camera let's us observe her, she's in the move. But when Céléstine climbs up the ladder of the social hierarchy she stops. She lies in her bed and commands people around her; the snow outside indicates this age of stagnation she has now entered.

Diary of a Chambermaid is based on the novel by Octave Mirbeau which was first adapted on screen by Jean Renoir in 1946. The first word of the title 'diary' refers to the protagonist of the story and in the novel everything is seen from Céléstine's perspective - and no thoughts of her can escape from us. But Luis Bunuel didn't want to focus on one perspective, he wanted to show the perspective of Céléstine but also of the strange people living in the mansion.

Bunuel's film portrays life in a swamp. He has transformed the bourgeoisie settings, he grew up in Spain, to France brilliantly. Swamp, of course, indicates a state of life; when you're in a swamp there is no way out. You are stuck and cannot move. This refers to the pessimism of Diary of a Chambermaid; there is no hope and the end shows that Luis Bunuel portrays a humankind with no future; the similar storm and clouds in the end, as in the beginning. All the horrors will happen again and again.

Diary of a Chambermaid is a film of antitheses. The city and the country, the bourgeoisie and the lower class - as mentioned, woods and the mansion, house animals and the wild animals. The two latter couples refer to the dichotomy of the film. The house symbolizes civilization where people are frigid and mellow, even the animals are under control. On the contrary, the woods symbolize the wild side of man where one's desires and passions run wild, where rules and standards are cut off and, where the rabbits, wild boars and snails are out of control.

It's a very clever film - attack on the bourgeoisie, a common subject for Bunuel but he was never as cruel, ruthless and pessimist about it as in Diary of a Chambermaid. Rapes, hypocrisy and disregard are the main elements which characterize the atmosphere of this film portraying a swampy world.

Luis Buñuel's stunning film stars Jeanne Moreau & Georges Géret in a clever battle of wills. Moreau is the new chambermaid of an estate lorded over by a kinky aristocrat (with a shoe fetish) and his remarkably uptight (and very materialistic) daughter, played to the hilt by Françoise Lugagne. The daughter's husband (Michel Piccoli) is a wannabe Casanova who's impregnated some of the past help. Added to the mix is political radical Géret, who may or may not be a child killer. Buñuel really peels back a rotten onion here, with the sexy and free-spirited Moreau slowly realizing that she's in a madhouse. The director has seldom been so straightforward in his indictments. Here he takes aim at the bourgeoisie, the French government, and of course religion (one of the townspeople is quick to finger a couple of monks as murder suspects). It's a scathing film but also filled with many comic touches: Moreau's show of boredom at her at employer's fetish; the constant battle between Piccoli and blustery neighbor Daniel Ivernel; Lugagne's hen pecking nagging of Moreau NOT to break anything. It's superbly acted by all, with Moreau giving what is really an Oscar worthy performance. In addition to the great work by Laugagne, Géret is perfect as the radical/bully and Piccoli adds a lot playing against type as a real nitwit. The film's co-writer Jean-Claude Carrière plays a befuddled priest.

Director Buñuel is infamous for his many movies that are attacks on contemporary society--in particular, the evils of the idle rich and right-wing thinking. This movie along with Exterminating Angel, Belle de Jour, The Discrete Charm of the Boureoise and That Obscure Object of Desire along with MANY other of his movies all attack Western culture--focusing on its hypocrisy and wickedness. In general, Socialists and left-leaning thinkers tend to view his films a lot more favorably than Conservatives and the Church (that's putting it mildly).

Diary of a Chambermaid will not disappoint if this is what you are looking for in a film. Among the MANY vices of the characters in the film are fetishes, sexual repression, murder, rape and antisemitism. Our main character, the decent chambermaid (played by Jeanne Moreau) tries to do the right thing although by the end of the film the utter futility of this is revealed.

When I watched the film, I tried to ignore the fact that I do not share the director's world view. If you just look at this film alone, it is a pretty entertaining movie with excellent acting, an unusual and interesting script and excellent pacing. However, it also, from time to time, got a little annoying as, in Buñuel's world, nearly everyone is corrupt--especially the rich. That's because, in a way, they seemed cartoonish--lampoons instead of people. While I'm sure there are a lot of hypocritical and sleazy rich folks out there, it's almost like propaganda to portray ALL of them again and again so negatively. As a result, they are all boiled down to stereotypes. This one-dimensionality prevented the movie from receiving a higher rating than 7.

"Le journal d'une femme de chambre" or "Diary of a Chambermaid" is a co-production between France and Italy from 1964, so this film will have its 60th anniversary next year, but it got shown now already on the occasion of a film retrospective on Luis Buñuel that was surely unrelated to the upcoming anniversary for this film and also for Buñuel 2023 is not a special year, unless you consider 123 a specific number as he was born in the first year of the 20th century. Which also means that he is no longer with us and sadly this is also true for pretty much everybody else from this movie. The child actress who played Claire may be an exception, but not sure there. She would also be in her mid70s now too, but there is nothing known apparently what happened after she played in this film and some other more known Buñuel movie. But let's stay with the basics for now: This is a film in black-and-white, which is not a given for the 1960s, but still the more likely production choice. Color films in great quantity did not happen before the 1970s. At slightly under 100 minutes this is neither a particularly short nor long movie. It seems the common running time for Buñuel. His films never really were super close to 90 minutes, but also did not run for over 105 minutes. He is the director here and one of the three writers. The original novel was written by Octave Mirbeau and she was born half a century before Buñuel already and as he was already in his 60s when this got made, so far away from his early years of filmmaking, but also not too close to the final years, which means that Mirbeau had died a long time ago already without being able to see how many films were based on her literary work. Not just in terms of this one here, even if this was also not yet the first version of this story that got taken to the big screen. I am talking about the one from right after World War II, so almost 20 years before this one, but as I said there is so much more she wrote that got taken to the screen. Already back then.

And the second writer is Jean-Claude Carrière. This one is really one of the big stars from French Film history and hoes not need to hide behind Buñuel. Carriére scored his first Oscar nomination around that time, for a short film and he won right away too. He stayed a steady collaborator for Buñuel and these two managed two more Oscar nominations in the 1970s for their screenplays before achieving his final nod a decade before the new millennium when Buñuel was already gone. But yeah, Carrière, who only died in 2021, was more than 30 years younger than Buñuel. This film here is the first I saw from the Buñuel retrospective and more will follow, two already today probably. The title is very fitting. It summarizes perfectly what this film here depicts. We follow the (professional life) of a woman around the age of 30 who works for a new family at their house. Said protagonist is played by BAFTA winner Jeanne Moreau in this film here. I was just undecided really if she was attractive in this film or not attractive at all. There was something about her, but also the exact opposite I guess. But it is not too important anyway and let me say all the men in this film basically also took the decision from me as literally every single one was crazy about her, totally had the hots for her, no matter if we are talking the old man of the house, the husband, the neighbor, the bearded guy and there were more even. It did get a bit ridiculous, like come on this gorgeous Moreau was not here. But she liked toying with the men. I am also not sure to what extent this was a comedy. There were moments in here that made me smile or even laugh once or twice, but it is really not a dominant factor and honestly, I also felt as if I was almost the only person in the crowd that was laughing.

One example was when we have the husband of the house tell the chambermaid to get a piece of clothing and tells her in which room it is, namely his room, and she asks back, because she is still new, where to find his room and he then responds in a manner as if she asked him that because she has sleazy thought in her head. Okay, this does maybe not sound half as funny as I perceived it there, but you get it. Maybe also the guy's face expression helped. He then in the end cannot really score with the woman and is clearly not happy when he finds out that she will marry another man. The fact that he is married does not seem like a factor at all. I mean his wife even talks to a priest on one occasion that she cannot fulfill her man's sexual pleasure and that it is painful for her and too often and I think she said something like twice per week and the priest's reaction to that was funny that he was shocked because of the frequency and I am not entirely sure if he was just joking or if this was really considered such a high number back then. I almost feel like it is the latter, but who knows. In any way, the film took a for me pretty unexpected route in the second half when we have a young girl being raped and murdered outside. It was all very strange. I mean I guess it was a success in terms of the production because I was really curious what happened and who killed her, but it so came out of nowhere and it was the result why the chambermaid then also returned and stayed because she maybe wanted to know the truth as well. But it would have been more realistic if she had left and I am sure they could have done something with this approach too, in the sense of how she leaves the horror behind.

So I assume her relationship with the man she is even engaged to was only meant for her to find out more about him and if it was him who killed the girl. I did not even understand why she suspected him, but even if he is the one who did it, which seems to be the case as he denies being there when clearly he was, even if we do not see him attack the girl in this scene, only ask if she wants to come home with him, it was all a bit far-fetched how she pretty much but an item there near the crime scene which indicates that he was there and killed the girl. The cops showing up eventually and acting all friendly before changing to their investigative selves was also a bit clumsy. Not gonna lie. In the end then, we find out that the man is probably going to be acquitted due to lack of evidence and this did make sense for once from a realism perspective. Not even we can be sure if it was him. On the non-crime front, there's also a few other things happening: The sex-crazy man starts sleeping with another less attractive chambermaid, but at least he can let off steam I guess. We do not know if his wife knows or wants to know even, but she knew about her man's shenanigans in the past. The protagonist does not marry the crime suspect, but instead marries the much older neighbor. He proposed to her as well earlier (of course he did!), but this came so out of nowhere that we literally see the two at the altar there or at the church. Bizarre twist. Other than her not rejecting his proposal on the spot, there was no indicator of this to happen. And he was indeed much older unlike the guy she called old and ugly or so. I assume her simply staying single was not an option here. Before that, we also see how the woman of the house (who can't satisfy her man's sexual desires) said farewell already to the protagonist and the other man with dark hair and the mustache because the plan was for them to get married and she was quite nice and friendly there despite what happened earlier with the lamp. This was also a bit bizarre as they talked specifically about how this lamp must not be damaged and then it is damaged just a few moments later. Oh well, at least nobody got fired.

As for the old man, the father of the woman of the house, he also has his very own fetish it seems and the title character has to play along apparently if she wants to keep her job. This surely went beyond cleaning duties though. I mean the part where she is reading stuff to him is still totally okay, but it got more and more bizarre. You will know what I mean when you see it. The old man also died then a little after halfway into the movie I think. It was almost the same time when the girl got killed, but we do not really find out anything about the old man's death. The crimes were probably not connected. Just a coincidence that they happened at the exact same time almost. I guess this is pretty much it then. I would not say this film was a truly great start to the Buñuel retrospective for me, but it also was not bad by any means. I guess I enjoyed the watch overall and still hope for slight improvements with the upcoming seven Buñuel movies I have also on my list. "Diary of a Chambermaid" gets a thumbs-up and this film had some solid authenticity going for it all along. What was up with the thunderstorm or what it was at the very end? So random. Anyway, I also liked how the chambermaids kept sticking together apparently and told each other about what happened to them, how people treated them and behaved towards them, also what they said about other characters. It felt authentic. The difference in standing in society is clearly there and is not ignored by any means. I have a bit of a hard time what this film really is. It is barely a drama, especially not before the killing, not a comedy or family film either. Certainly no thriller. Maybe it is just a sort-of depiction of the state of events. There is no need anyway to give a name to everything and categorize it in a certain genre. What you must know is that you can give this film a chance, one of Buñuel's perhaps not most famous films, despite the inclusion of Moreau and Michel Piccoli for example who you will also find in every book about French film history. Seeing their film here once and on the small screen may be enough though. That is all. Oh and a little appetizer: Writer Carrière himself portrays the priest I mentioned earlier. Just one scene though.

God, what a downer! There's not a single character in Luis Bunuel' "Diary of a Chambermaid" that exudes sympathy. Except for the titular chambermaid herself, Célestine, played by Jeanne Moreau but she's sympathetic by default as the anchor on which revolves most of the other characters' depraved and decadent behavior. She's the newly hired chambermaid from Paris and working for a rich aristocratic family, the Monteils, she's the unlikely revealer of the mentalities that poisoned France in the mid-30's and that only waited for a catalysis to burst out, the worst way, foreshadowing the worst that was still to happen in the next decade.

The gallery of characters who occupy the film is depressing indeed, the wife, Madame Monteil, is a dry, childless and frigid woman who's not keen on sex because of pelvic pain, her husband played by Michel Piccoli is a frustrated man who can only satisfy his sexual urges on any woman that comes at range. Rumor has it that he impregnated the previous maid and he seems eager to replicate the experience with Célestine, maybe not with the same consequence. The rest of the staff includes the groom Joseph (powerful performance from Georges Géret) a brute that keeps on blabbering about foreigners and goes on anti-Semitic rants reflecting the mentalities of the time.

There's also a neighbor who's a veteran from the Great War and keeps childishly throwing stones on their fences, his plump wife and to complete the obscene portrait, Monsieur's Monteil's elderly father (Jacques Ozenne) who grows a strange fetishist attraction toward Célestine, asking her to read racy novels every night, occasionally try some shoes from his collection and let him caress her ankle. I said Célestine wasn't sympathetic, but only in the sense that she reacts to all the sexual oppression and exploits in order to survive in what seems to be a rotten society. After all, even the good persons can't all be innocent.

Celestine is the straight woman, not of a tragicomedy, but of a disillusioned and bitter depiction of the bourgeois upper class at the dawn of World War II, when fascism was raising its ugly head all over Europe. Bunuel faced fascism when censorship prevented his second movie "L'Age d'Or" to be shown in theaters, so you can tell there's a record to settle in his "Diary", the tone is far from his usual surrealistic tropes, and there's not even a moment left for comic relief or far-fetched twists. Bad things happen and it's up to Celestine to turn them to her advantage, to make her weakness an asset, in a way, she reminds me of that great quote from Dolores Clairbone: "Sometimes, being a bitch is all a woman's got to hold in to".

But what if you're not a woman? The tone gets even darker when the one innocent character, a little girl to which Celestine grew a rapid fondness, is brutally raped and murdered by Joseph. The scene starts as a representation of "little red riding hood" and when Joseph warns her about the wolf, he snaps and he realizes that he'd make a good predator after all. The murder of the girl derails Celestine's plans, she was just about to live the mansion but decides to stay to confront the rapist she clearly identified. Yet the film is less about heroism but about a really ugly time. It might also feel like the downfall of the bourgeois society but the most ruthless and despicable man is a working man. There was something rotten to the core and that's how the whole experience feels, shocking and displeasing. Bunuel beautifully conveyed that feeling.

"Diary of a Chambermaid" is perhaps a less colorful version of the same world Renoir showed in "The Rules of the Game", as there's no game in the film, unless you mean the game of hypocrisy, frivolity disguised under respectability and unhappiness, the only person who might end up happy after all is the veteran who married Célestine, he was old, she was young and plain, together they deserve each other. The ending is anti-romantic but shows that there was a zone of turbulence history had to get through and that culminated at a time where people started to practice, the end doesn't even feature Célestine but a march of fascists lead by Joseph and shouting "Vive Chiappe" (the man who censored "L'Age d'Or"). It's very telling when the only guy who "walks the walk" in the film is the most despicable.

Maybe Renoir's tone was more playful because, unlike Bunuel, he made the film before the War. Bunuel knew where this was leading to and maybe the little girl was an allegory of little Marianne, as a France, still young, and ready to be murdered. The film, written by Jean-Claude Carrère, marks an interesting reminder of the darkest hours of France. Jeanne Moreau just died and I saw the film a second time on a special TV tribute, the film made me realize how fresh and lively she looks, despite being 36 at the time of the film, she exudes a mix of pseudo innocence and a blasé attitude that is genuinely irresistible, she's not glamorous but she raises her appeal beyond the usual archetypes, and it works in the film.

Still, it's a rather displeasing story whose title doesn't prepare you for how actually dark it is.