Luis Buñuel

Belle de jour

Belle de jour

Catherine Deneuve’s porcelain perfection hides a cracked interior in one of the actress’s most iconic roles: Séverine, a Paris housewife who begins secretly spending her after­noon hours working in a bordello. This surreal and erotic late-sixties daydream from provocateur for the ages Luis Buñuel is an examination of desire and fetishistic pleasure (its characters’ and its viewers’), as well as a gently absurdist take on contemporary social mores and class divisions. Fantasy and reality commingle in this burst of cinematic transgression, which was one of Buñuel’s biggest hits.

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Film Info

  • France
  • 1967
  • 100 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.66:1
  • French
  • Spine #593

Special Features

  • New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • Audio commentary featuring Michael Wood, author of the BFI Film Classics book Belle de jour
  • New video piece featuring writer and sexual-politics activist Susie Bright and film scholar Linda Williams
  • New interview with screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière
  • Segment from the French television program Cinéma, featuring interviews with Carrière and actress Catherine Deneuve
  • Original and rerelease trailers
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: A new essay by critic Melissa Anderson and a 1970s interview with director Luis Buñuel

    New cover by David Downton

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • Audio commentary featuring Michael Wood, author of the BFI Film Classics book Belle de jour
  • New video piece featuring writer and sexual-politics activist Susie Bright and film scholar Linda Williams
  • New interview with screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière
  • Segment from the French television program Cinéma, featuring interviews with Carrière and actress Catherine Deneuve
  • Original and rerelease trailers
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: A new essay by critic Melissa Anderson and a 1970s interview with director Luis Buñuel

    New cover by David Downton
Belle de jour
Cast
Catherine Deneuve
Séverine Serizy (Belle de jour)
Jean Sorel
Pierre Serizy
Michel Piccoli
Henri Husson
Geneviéve Page
Madame Anaïs
Pierre Clémenti
Marcel
Françoise Fabian
Charlotte
Macha Méril
Renée
Muni
Pallas
Maria Latour
Mathilde
Claude Cerval
Inspector
Michel Charrel
Footman
Francisco Rabal
Hippolyte
Georges Marchal
Duke
Francis Blanche
Monsieur Adolphe
Credits
Director
Luis Buñuel
From the novel by
Joseph Kessel
Adaptation and dialogue
Luis Buñuel
Adaptation and dialogue
Jean-Claude Carrière
Director of photography
Sacha Vierny
Production designer
Robert Clavel
Editor
Louisette Hautecœur
Sound
René Longuet
Costumes
Hélène Nourry
Producer
Raymond Hakim
Producer
Robert Hakim

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Luis Buñuel

Writer, Director

Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel

As made clear in his seminal works Viridiana and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie—delirious screeds against, respectively, religion and social conformity—Luis Buñuel was one of cinema’s great subversives and mischief makers. He began his career as a member of the French surrealists—his first films, Un chien andalou and L’âge d’or, absurd and violently sexual scandals that met with censorship, were collaborations with Salvador Dalí. After years of working alternately in his native Spain (where the scintillating, shaming faux documentary Land Without Bread and, later, Viridiana were both banned), the United States, and Mexico, Buñuel made most of his late films in France, combining surrealist non sequiturs with attacks on the bourgeoisie, the church, and social hypocrisy in general in such masterpieces as The Milky Way, The Phantom of Liberty, and That Obscure Object of Desire.

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