It would finally happen with this film something for Buñuel not unwanted, the filmmaker returned to work in European lands, the Spanish prodigal son was repatriated, if not to Spain, yes to Europe, after decades of absence, after years working in Mexico and acquiring expertise in the craft of filmmaker. Long way had been traveled, not a little evolution and maturity the Iberian has experienced in this point of his life, and his career, his growth and greater definition in his guidelines were already undeniable, when returning to the old continent, he will finally have the opportunity to get the resources to take his work to some of the greatest artistic cusps. The director returns to adapt a literary history, after leaving this custom for some films, now based on a work by Octave Mirbeau, portraying, with corrosive look, the experiences of an attractive woman, who works as a maid, and that when arriving at a new house, will generate diverse masculine reactions, at the same time that she will look for an advantageous pairing for her social condition, while she develops in an environment dominated by aristocrats plagued of despicable defects. It is a film in which Buñuel applies a lot of everything he has learned, from the technical aspect it is one of his most brilliant films, although he has left his surrealism noticeably aside.
The actions begin with a young woman, who arrives by train in the countryside, in France, she is Céléstine (Jeanne Moreau), is picked up by Joseph (Georges Géret), taken to a residence where she will be a maid. Meet the gentlemen of the house, Mr. Monteil (Michel Piccoli) and Mrs. Monteil (Françoise Lugagne); she also meets another servant, Marianne (Muni), and Mr. Rabour (Jean Ozenne), father of the lord of the house, who gives boots to her. Soon she is drawing attention, Mr. Monteil professes admiration and desire, then she meets the former military Mauger (Daniel Ivernel); she disturbs Mrs. Monteil by her ways and certain refinements that she brings from Paris, while her husband continues trying to seduce the maid. They receive the visit of the village priest (Jean-Claude Carrière), to whom Mrs. Monteil asks for marital advice, and shortly after they discover Mr. Rabour dead. Joseph in a moment violates and kills a local girl, then tries to seduce Céléstine; Mr. Monteil argues arduously with Mauger, his annoying neighbor. Céléstine, despite suspecting Joseph and his crime, gives in to his courtship, but listens to Mauger's marriage proposal. The police investigate, identify the murderer, arrest him; Céléstine marries Mauger, but learns that Joseph will go free when there is no evidence against him, while a political march takes place.
In this work by the Iberian master, the filmmaker is not long in demonstrating his experience, in showing his expertise obtained with the camera, in his handling, and as well returning a small tribute to the then effervescent and fashionable cinematic current; in this way, the camera in hand will flow, watchword of the Nouvelle Vague, revealing the solemnity and great skill of Buñuel upon entering French lands, where he filmed. The camera behaves with extraordinary ease, reaches a new level the performance of the tool in its freedom, with enormous sobriety moves through the rooms of the residence, it is certainly one of the formally most powerful films of the director, as if when beimg finally working again in Europe, the filmmaker would be insuflated new inspiration. There will be zooms-in, zooms-out, detail shots are made, but the most striking are the sequence shots, repeated exercises never before developed with such prolixity and sobriety by the Iberian, a tribute certainly to the Nouvelle Vague and the management of the camera by that current professed; the genius was already experienced, he was already in the fullness of his faculties, the filmmaker is delighted with his camera, so longed for return to Europe, Buñuel is shown neat, is striving, is one of his films technically majors. The return to Europe, by the way, did not happen in the way the filmmaker thought, but it happened; this film initially he wanted to shoot it in Mexico, with Silvia Pinal as the protagonist, but due to certain problems -scandals caused by Viridiana (1961), and the consequent refusal to shoot there Tristana-, finally, and with the intermediation of the great Fernando Rey, Buñuel made the contacts to return triumphantly to Europe. Thus, the Aragonese could finally forge indelible friendships in his return, valuable and enduring friendships such as screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, in this film acting as well, and producer Serge Silberman; these genuine friendships, especially with the scriptwriter, were some of the pillars on which the final stage of the director's career would be supported. After a long wait, and after noting that there was no other way, finally the born in Calanda shoots again in Europe, new friendships are born, new paths are born, the final stage of Buñuel, for many the brightest, was already on the verge of hatch.
As always in his narrative economy, Buñuel draws us quickly to his female protagonist, she does not doubt in expressing a certain disdain for the field where she is arriving, soon Joseph makes an observation on her shoes, responding with attempts to play innocent; she is cynical, and unequivocally careerist. Her arrival, from the first moment, does not leave anyone indifferent, Mr. Monteil is uneasy in his first contact with her, not to mention Patriarch Rabour and his unique fetish fixation, which is nothing but a reflection of the world inside of the filmmaker himself. The singular feminine upsets everything, she, coming from Paris, disturbs the residents of the countryside, and, in spite of being a maid, dazzles servitude as well as bourgeois, being exemplary the scene of her awakening jealousy and annoyance in the lady of the home for using perfume, something that neither she, aristocrat, usually does. Returning to this theme, it is one of the films in which he most clearly portrays some of his eternal obsession themes, his fetishes, his incorrigible weakness, the female legs, of Jeanne Moreau this time, while the old patriarch fondles her calves, and in his book My last breath, tell us the director: "I have always been sensitive to women's walking, as well as to their gaze. In The Diary of a Chambermaid, during the booty scene, I had a real pleasure in making her walk and filming her. When she walks, her feet trembles slightly on the heel of the shoe. Disturbing instability. Wonderful actress, I limited myself to follow her, hardly correcting her. She taught me about the character things that I did not suspect "; it is not difficult to notice that Rabour in this case is dressed as Buñuel's alter ego, admiring her walking in a room. Yes, he pours, as usual, the filmmaker in his film, we notice his personality, his personal images, and in that sense the fetishist filmmaker is freer than ever in another of his quintessential figures, the feet, the feet of the Moreau, now coming to the detail of the booties, the old collector; he revels as has not been seen before in portraying his foot fetish. Then we will see the old Rabour, inert in his bed, but clinging tightly to the booties, a delirium that the filmmaker allows himself; the fetish of the shoes even acquires another aspect to be the key to discover the murder. Looms again as well the hobby of the entomologist, hobby that certainly shared with Carrière, in the form of a butterfly that is liquidated with bullets, or ants that flow in a garden; Buñuel's winks never fail, and they turn coherent and recognizable his cinema.
The director draws us a terrible portrait of the bourgeois, racist and fascist, not in vain changed the setting of the book, to take it to the twenties of the twentieth century, the interwar period in which totalitarian regimes arose, right-wing extremists, anti-Semitism, the director offers a look at some topics that he knew first-hand. Buñuel directs his very acid look towards bourgeois morality, which for him was always immoral, and that because everyone portrayed has defects, some severely despicable, the director does not leave a puppet with a head, his portrait is corrosive and bitter; it is a parade of miseries of the bourgeoisie, his look is hopeless, as actually many times he left patent in his films. Lustful, liars, anti-Semites, pedophiles and murderers, bitter vision of humanity, formerly in The Exterminating Angel (1962), was in urban bourgeois, now in country bourgeois. This is crowned in the twisted love of the maid and the criminal, he is a murderous pedophile, and she, knowing that, accepts him not as a lover, but as a companion, and he, almost as if replying, also seduces Marianne by his way. Singular moment is when Céléstine and Joseph consummate their intention of marriage, then in the dark, in bed, she exhorts him disturbingly to admit that he raped and killed the girl, there are certain details that make her disturbing. She is an upstart, is a weathervane, Machiavellian, flirt with everyone and marries an older man without hesitation to improve her condition, finally has an uncertain outcome, as the black stormy clouds eventually strengthen. Symbolically, Joseph, the most despicable of all, shielded himself in the army, in religion, law, order, country, in some other pillars of society, and she, unlikely, kisses him and accepts his carnal offer. The characters are typically buñuelian, although Manichaeism does not appear with all the vigor of other opportunities, they are complex characters, some not completely bad or good, especially her, and it is something that the filmmaker considered could harm the acceptance of the public, there is no figure with which they can fully identify. Thus, we have significantly the priest advising abstention, there should be no pleasure in marital relations, to avoid it, he tells to Mrs. Monteil, the languor and sexual neutrality of her collides with the express libidine of her husband. We have a remarkable sequence, without words, portrays the most despicable action, Joseph is mean, abject, outrages and kills the girl, Buñuel is a master talking to us, suggesting, narrating with images, and it will be another one of those memorable images, the bleeding legs of the girl, with snails moving to pachydermic rhythm for them, suggesting the vileness that has happened, and the time the corpse has been there. To a lesser extent there is the scene of love, again without words, the intercourse of Céléstine and Joseph is given to understand in the dark. The sisters of Buñuel asserted how clear they could appreciate the director's life, childhood embodied in the film -something ineluctable for the connoisseur of Buñuel's work-, among other things, for those snails, an image of the director's childhood, and likewise in his bestiary, a boar and a rabbit are now added. In the film there is no surrealism, it is a conventional feature, a thorny portrait of country bourgeois, in which relegated the political part of the original book, not saving though the end of that "Viva Chiappe!", vindicating his particular revenge against the right-wing who vetoed The Golden Age. The return to Europe finally takes place, new directions open to the already mature director, his film is formally one of his best works, stands out as always directing his actors -even speaking with a certain warmth of the French actress Muni-, the Iberian director was ready to give the best of his art.
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