Vintage Buñuelian ironical film dealing with Celestine the chambermaid, so she has new job on the country. There she works for are a group of strange people, the family is from the bourgeois class, The Monteils. The ambitious, beautiful Celestine (Jeanne Moreau gives one of her best film performances) makes it from Downstairs to Upstairs by manipulating right-wing lord (Michel Piccoli), wife (Francois Lugagne), his fascist gamekeeper Joseph (Georges Géret), his leftist neighbour (Ivernel) and causes quite a stir among the variously uptight, perverse and violent inhabitants.
This is a free adaptation of the notorious novel by Octave Mirabeau, being Luis Buñue's first foray into French cinema and easing into an atmosphere of sexual hypocrisy and decadence. The story is that of vixenish Celestine, a Parisian waitress who arrives at a country house to serve the Monteil family, her presence will cause a series of embarrassing and disconcerting situations. Octatave Mirabeau's muckracking, famous 1900 novel has abiding insight into the deep structures of French political instability. Buñuel shifts the tale from 1900s to the rise of fascism in the 30s, being very stylized in direction and set design. Buñuel digs right down to that spiritual gunge which links social, political and sexual positions and impositions as equal perversions of human desires in turn perversions of animal desires. Stars Jeanne Moreau who gives a nice acting as a sophisticated and self-assured woman from Paris joins a middle-class rural estate as a maid. Like most Buñuel heroines Celestine is intuitively a feminist, but before her time, and blows it by her ambivalence and egoism before male ruthlessness. This ¨Le journal d'une femme de chambre¨(1964) is a remake of ¨Diary of a Chambermaid¨ (1946) an unsettling rendition by Jean Renoir produced during Renoir's years in Hollywood, being played by Paulette Goddard, Burgues Meredith, Hurt Hatfield and there're other adaptations made by Jess Frank or Jesús Franco.
This wry and engaging motion picture was compellingly directed by Luis Buñuel who was voted the 14th Greatest Director of all time. Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both subversive behavior and religion , issues well shown in a lot of films and that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career. This Buñuel's strange film belongs to his French second period ; in fact, it's plenty of known French actors. As Buñuel ived in various countries: Spain, France, Mexico where stayed many years and subsequently emigrated from Mexico to France and in the latter filmed other excellent movies. After moving to Paris, at the beginning , a young Buñuel did a variety of film-related odd jobs, including working as an assistant to director Jean Epstein. With financial help from his mother and creative assistance from Dalí, he made his first film , this 17-minute "Un Chien Andalou" (1929), and immediately catapulted himself into film history thanks to its disturbing images and surrealist plot. The following year, sponsored by wealthy art patrons, he made his second picture, the scabrous witty and violent "Age of Gold" (1930), which mercilessly attacked the church and the middle classes, themes that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career. That career, though, seemed almost over by the mid-1930s, as he found work increasingly hard to come by and after the Spanish Civil War, where he made ¨Las Hurdes¨, as Luis emigrated to the US where he worked for the Museum of Modern Art and as a film dubber for Warner Bros. Luís subsequently went on his Mexican period, so he teamed up with producer Óscar Dancigers and after a couple of unmemorable efforts shot back to international attention with the lacerating study of Mexican street urchins in ¨Los Olvidados¨ (1950), winning him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. But despite this new-found acclaim, Buñuel spent much of the next decade working on a variety of ultra-low-budget films, few of which made much impact outside Spanish-speaking countries, though many of them are well worth seeking out. As he went on filming "The Great Madcap" , ¨The brute¨, "Wuthering Heights", ¨El¨ , "The Criminal Life of Archibaldo De la Cruz", ¨Robinson Crusoe¨, ¨Death in the garden¨ and many others . And finally his French-Spanish period in collaboration with producer Serge Silberman and writer Jean-Claude Carrière with notorious as well as polemic films such as: ¨Viridiana¨ , Tristana¨ , ¨The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie", ¨Belle De Jou¨ and his last picture , "That Obscure Object of Desire". Rating: 7/10. Well worth watching for Luis Buñuel followers.
This is a free adaptation of the notorious novel by Octave Mirabeau, being Luis Buñue's first foray into French cinema and easing into an atmosphere of sexual hypocrisy and decadence. The story is that of vixenish Celestine, a Parisian waitress who arrives at a country house to serve the Monteil family, her presence will cause a series of embarrassing and disconcerting situations. Octatave Mirabeau's muckracking, famous 1900 novel has abiding insight into the deep structures of French political instability. Buñuel shifts the tale from 1900s to the rise of fascism in the 30s, being very stylized in direction and set design. Buñuel digs right down to that spiritual gunge which links social, political and sexual positions and impositions as equal perversions of human desires in turn perversions of animal desires. Stars Jeanne Moreau who gives a nice acting as a sophisticated and self-assured woman from Paris joins a middle-class rural estate as a maid. Like most Buñuel heroines Celestine is intuitively a feminist, but before her time, and blows it by her ambivalence and egoism before male ruthlessness. This ¨Le journal d'une femme de chambre¨(1964) is a remake of ¨Diary of a Chambermaid¨ (1946) an unsettling rendition by Jean Renoir produced during Renoir's years in Hollywood, being played by Paulette Goddard, Burgues Meredith, Hurt Hatfield and there're other adaptations made by Jess Frank or Jesús Franco.
This wry and engaging motion picture was compellingly directed by Luis Buñuel who was voted the 14th Greatest Director of all time. Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both subversive behavior and religion , issues well shown in a lot of films and that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career. This Buñuel's strange film belongs to his French second period ; in fact, it's plenty of known French actors. As Buñuel ived in various countries: Spain, France, Mexico where stayed many years and subsequently emigrated from Mexico to France and in the latter filmed other excellent movies. After moving to Paris, at the beginning , a young Buñuel did a variety of film-related odd jobs, including working as an assistant to director Jean Epstein. With financial help from his mother and creative assistance from Dalí, he made his first film , this 17-minute "Un Chien Andalou" (1929), and immediately catapulted himself into film history thanks to its disturbing images and surrealist plot. The following year, sponsored by wealthy art patrons, he made his second picture, the scabrous witty and violent "Age of Gold" (1930), which mercilessly attacked the church and the middle classes, themes that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career. That career, though, seemed almost over by the mid-1930s, as he found work increasingly hard to come by and after the Spanish Civil War, where he made ¨Las Hurdes¨, as Luis emigrated to the US where he worked for the Museum of Modern Art and as a film dubber for Warner Bros. Luís subsequently went on his Mexican period, so he teamed up with producer Óscar Dancigers and after a couple of unmemorable efforts shot back to international attention with the lacerating study of Mexican street urchins in ¨Los Olvidados¨ (1950), winning him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. But despite this new-found acclaim, Buñuel spent much of the next decade working on a variety of ultra-low-budget films, few of which made much impact outside Spanish-speaking countries, though many of them are well worth seeking out. As he went on filming "The Great Madcap" , ¨The brute¨, "Wuthering Heights", ¨El¨ , "The Criminal Life of Archibaldo De la Cruz", ¨Robinson Crusoe¨, ¨Death in the garden¨ and many others . And finally his French-Spanish period in collaboration with producer Serge Silberman and writer Jean-Claude Carrière with notorious as well as polemic films such as: ¨Viridiana¨ , Tristana¨ , ¨The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie", ¨Belle De Jou¨ and his last picture , "That Obscure Object of Desire". Rating: 7/10. Well worth watching for Luis Buñuel followers.