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7.8
/10
1,851 Ratings

Diary of a Chambermaid

Le journal d'une femme de chambre

Trailer
Directed by Luis Buñuel
France, Italy, 1964
Drama, Crime

Synopsis

In this wicked adaptation of the Octave Mirbeau novel, Jeanne Moreau is Celestine, a beautiful Parisian domestic who, upon arrival at her new job at an estate in provincial 1930s France, entrenches herself in sexual hypocrisy and scandal with her philandering employer (Michel Piccoli).

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Diary of a Chambermaid Directed by Luis Buñuel
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Awards & Festivals

Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists

1965 | Nominee: Best Foreign Director

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Cast & Crew

Articles from the Notebook

Remembering Michel Piccoli

Having worked with some of the best directors to make some of the greatest films of his lifetime, the actor’s death marks the end of an era.
Caspar Salmon
1

Surviving Desire: The Films of Jean-Claude Carrière

A Museum of Modern Art retrospective puts the spotlight on the influential screenwriter who has worked with Tati, Buñuel, and Godard.
Lawrence Garcia

Late Buñuel: Women, Surrealism, Power

The late films made by Luis Buñuel in France see women take an increasingly independent role in his surreal comic dramas.
Ela Bittencourt

Expecting the Unexpected: Four by Luis Buñuel

The late masterpieces by the infamous surrealist revel in disrupting and subverting expectations.
Jeremy Carr

Critics reviews

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[Surrealist themes] are all contained within Buñuel’s simple visual style and even tone – and are certainly discreet – contributing to a subtlety that perhaps contributes to this film’s relative critical neglect in the director’s oeuvre.
March 14, 2018
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Shot in lush, widescreen black-and-white, Chambermaid is a supremely elegant film, its graceful surfaces sometimes at odds with the cruelty of its story. Buñuel’s typical injections of perversion and narrative non sequiturs quietly accumulate, so that early on you could mistake the movie for an almost conventional one. Perhaps the picture’s greatest virtue is Moreau’s central performance.
March 28, 2017
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First half works as a kind of sexualised screwball about a nutty rich family… then my heart sank halfway through when a Certain Event takes place because it seemed certain to result in political point-scoring (whereas before the house worked as a kind of microcosm), but in fact Bunuel somehow avoids cheap empowerment, bringing home yet again how dumbed-down and self-righteous our polarised political climate is.
January 03, 2015
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