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Poster available at POSTERITATI. Illustration by Keiko Kimura

Storytelling ingenuity, surrealistic imagination and sheer cinematic mischief are brilliantly intertwined... Moreau is superb in every way, but top honors go to Bunuel's subtly dreamlike telling of the tale. -- David Sterritt, Christian Science Monitor

35mm SCOPE RESTORATION!

(1964) "The country is always a little triste," complains Parisian femme de chambre JEANNE MOREAU en route to her new post at a provincial manor. But maybe another adjective comes to mind when she checks out the ménage: the foot fetishist paterfamilias ("I want to see them live!" he exhorts, as she saunters about in a choice pair of boots from his private stock); Michel Piccoli's chain-smoking, endlessly frustrated son-in-law ("he's a dead loss," notes another domestic); the frigid, fuss-budget daughter who conducts enigmatic chemical experiments, and demands that Moreau remove her shoes before she dusts the salon; the next-door neighbor who tosses garbage and vituperation over the wall; and Georges Geret's fascist roughneck manservant, who really enjoys slaughtering the geese.

Adapted from Octave Mirbeau's satiric 1900 novel (previously filmed in Hollywood by Renoir, with Paulette Goddard), we're obviously in Buñuel country, although it's one of his more stylistically straightforward works, with the action updated to the late 20s to provide commentary on the rise of the right-wing Action Française and the director's trademark surrealism eschewed in favor of more realistic b&w cinematography, the Scope camera gliding past sets stuffed with "priceless" tchotchkes.

A second-choice project for Buñuel after the Spanish government nixed his first attempt at Tristana, the material obviously proved congenial (the foot fetishism comes straight from the book) and teamed the director for the first time with producer Serge Silberman and co-scripter Jean-Claude Carrière (here in a cameo as the priest a little too interested in the daughter's sexual problems), collaborators he would stay with for the rest of his career; while providing him with a very Buñuelian ambiguity - is Moreau coming on to a rapist/murderer because 1) she's trying to trap him, 2) she's actually turned on, or 3) both? - and a chance for belated revenge: the "Chiappe" the fascists cheer at the end is the police commissioner who suppressed his L'Age d'Or in 1930. Buñuel's most sardonically realistic work has been stunningly restored by Studiocanal in France from the original negative, with all new subtitles by Lenny Borger, who most recently provided new translations for Grand Illusion and Rififi. "Filming Jeanne Moreau was a great pleasure; when she walks, her foot trembles just a bit on its high heel, suggesting a certain tension and instability. She taught me things about the character that I'd never suspected were there." - Buñuel.

A Rialto Pictures Release.

Links:

• Rialto Pictures DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID page
• Atkinson's Review of DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID in The Village Voice.
• The Internet Movie Database THE DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID Page
• More information about Luis Buñuel

DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID DVD or VHS	Contemporary French Cinema: An Introduction by Guy Austin	French New Wave by Jean Douchet, Robert Bonnono (Translator), Cedric Anger, Robert Bononno	Landscapes of Loss: The National Past in Postwar French Cinema by Naomi Greene	(Not Shown) Stars & Stardom in French Cinema : In Depth Studies of Brigitte Bardot, Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Juliette Binoche, & More by Ginette Vincendeau
Buñuel by John Baxter, Stephen Baxter	An Unspeakable Betrayal: Selected Writings of Luis Buñuel by Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carriere	My Last Sigh by Luis Buñuel	Luis Buñuel The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie by Marsha Kinder (Editor)	Objects of Desire: Conversations With Luis Buñuel by Jose De LA Colina, Tomas Perez Turrent (Contributor), Paul Lenti (Editor)

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