Luis Buñuel

Diary of a Chambermaid

Diary of a Chambermaid

This wicked adaptation of the Octave Mirbeau novel is classic Luis Buñuel. 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 (Buñuel regular Michel Piccoli). Filmed in luxurious black-and-white Franscope, Diary of a Chambermaid is a raw-edged tangle of fetishism and murder—and a scathing look at the burgeoning French fascism of the era.

Film Info

  • France
  • 1964
  • 98 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 2.35:1
  • French
  • Spine #117

Special Features

  • Spectacular new widescreen transfer, with digitally restored image and sound and enhanced for 16x9 televisions
  • Video interview with screenwriter and longtime Buñuel collaborator Jean-Claude Carrière
  • Transcript of a late 1970s interview with director Luis Bunuel
  • Original theatrical trailer, narrated by Jeanne Moreau
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition

New cover by Keiko Kimura

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • Spectacular new widescreen transfer, with digitally restored image and sound and enhanced for 16x9 televisions
  • Video interview with screenwriter and longtime Buñuel collaborator Jean-Claude Carrière
  • Transcript of a late 1970s interview with director Luis Bunuel
  • Original theatrical trailer, narrated by Jeanne Moreau
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition

New cover by Keiko Kimura

Diary of a Chambermaid
Cast
Jeanne Moreau
Celestine
Michel Piccoli
Monsieur Monteil
Georges Géret
Joseph
Daniel Ivernel
Captaine Mauger
Françoise Lugagne
Madame Monteil
Jean Ozenne
Monsieur Rabour
Muni
Marianne
Jean-Claude Carrière
The priest
Credits
Director
Luis Buñuel
Producer
Serge Silberman
Producer
Michael Safra
Screenplay
Luis Buñuel
Screenplay
Jean-Claude Carrière
From the novel by
Octave Mirbeau
Cinematography
Roger Fellous
Cameraman
Adolphe Charlet
Decors and costumes
Georges Wakhévitch
Sound
Antoine Petitjean
Editing
Louisette Hautecoeur
Assistant director
Pierre Lary
Assistant director
Jean-Luis Buñuel
Production manager
Henri Baum

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Jean-Claude Carrière

Writer

Jean-Claude Carrière
Jean-Claude Carrière

A quietly influential force in art cinema throughout the second half of the twentieth century and beyond, screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière (also an author, actor, opera librettist, and occasional director) has collaborated with such important screen artists as Luis Buñuel, Milos Forman, Jean-Luc Godard, Philip Kaufman, Louis Malle, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, and Andrzej Wajda. He got his start working with the comic filmmaker Pierre Etaix on the Oscar-winning slapstick short Happy Anniversary (1962), which the two codirected; Carrière would go on to cowrite all of Etaix’s 1960s features. Meanwhile, Buñuel enlisted Carrière to cowrite 1964’s Diary of a Chambermaid, the beginning of a grand partnership that would also result in increasingly surreal visions like Belle de jour (1967), The Milky Way (1969), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), The Phantom of Liberty (1974), and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977). (In 2012, Carrière said of working with Buñuel, “How we mixed together is impossible to say. One started an idea, the other finished it.”) As is clear from those productions, he has a way with the absurd, but the versatile and erudite Carrière is also a keen literary adapter, translating such daunting novels as The Tin Drum and The Unbearable Lightness of Being into formidable films. Carrière’s career continues to take surprising turns: he has a small but crucial role in Abbas Kiarostami’s 2010 Certified Copy, for example.