The Maids (French: Les Bonnes) is a 1975 British film directed by Christopher Miles, adapted from Jean Genet’s play of the same name. Producer Ely Landau made it for the American Film Theatre, one of thirteen stage-to-screen adaptations that series released in the United States between 1973 and 1975. Glenda Jackson plays Solange, Susannah York plays Claire, Vivien Merchant plays Madame, and Mark Burns plays Monsieur. When Madame is out, the two maids run a carefully built sadomasochistic ceremony and take turns as tyrant mistress or abased servant. The point of the roleplay is to kill Madame. Slow pacing and fuss over detail mean they always fail to “kill” her at the climax. The murder stays an unfinished fantasy. It is not a method.
Greenwich Theatre to Cannes
The four leads had already played the piece at London’s Greenwich Theatre before the 1975 cameras rolled. That continuity keeps the film close to Genet’s theater, rather than a loose “inspired by” treatment. Christopher Miles planned a twelve-day shoot. Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe used a single camera that could move anywhere over the set. They brought Genet’s stage devices into the film: a camera that often sits still, lush extravagant settings, ceremony set above naturalism. What comes out is filmed power theater — costume, insult, ritual climax — not a realist crime picture. In 1975 it screened at the Cannes Film Festival outside the main competition. It opened in New York on 21 April. On 22 April, Vincent Canby in The New York Times treated it as an exciting Genet transfer under the American Film Theatre banner.
The house as the scene
For viewers who like power exchange, Jackson and York carry the circulating top and bottom of Genet’s maids. Merchant’s Madame is the real authority. The game burns only while she is away. There is no dungeon set. The house is the scene, built from service, humiliation, and murder fantasy. Popular talk still ties the plot to the 1933 Papin sisters murders. Genet denied a one-to-one inspiration. The cultural echo of servants attacking a bourgeois household still hangs over every staging, and over this film. The roles are adults, swapping power inside a familiar room.
