Belle de Jour

BFI Film Classics

by Michael Wood

Belle de Jour (1967) inaugurated the last phase of Luis Bunuel's fifty-year film-making career. At once a sharp social satire and a reflection on the interlocking of reality and fantasy, memory and dream, Belle de Jour stars Catherine Deneuve as Severine, a respectable doctor's wife who has a secret afternoon life as a prostitute. Dressed by Yves Saint-Laurent, Deneuve personifies a European class that is beautiful and enduring, in spite of its aura of decadence. But she's also a woman at war with her past and her desires, trying to clear her mind - if she can - of its ghosts.
In this study Michael Wood sets out to unravel some of the enigmas and paradoxes of one of Bunuel's most intricate films. What in Belle de Jour is meant to be taken at face value, and what is fabrication, riddle or satire? In playing the guessing-game of Belle de Jour, Wood proposes an analysis of late Bunuel. Neither a serene old man nor an unreconstructed Surrealist, the Bunuel of Belle de Jour is, for Wood, a film-maker whose insights are all the more devastating for being so lightly and stylishly delivered.

Genres: Film

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 26, 2001

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Michael Wood born in Lincoln, England, is the Charles Barnwell Straut Class of 1923 Professor of English and Professor of comparative literature at Princeton University. He is an alumnus of St John's College, Cambridge.

Prior to teaching to Princeton, he taught at Columbia University, and at the University of Exeter in Devon, England.

He was Director of the Gauss Seminars in Criticism at Princeton from 1995-2001, and chaired Princeton's English department from 1998 to 2004. He writes regularly for The New York Review of Books and on film for the London Review of Books.

Reviews

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid, insightful close read of the 1967 Luis Bunuel film from English literature professor Michael Wood that makes a strong case for how, when, and why the film mingles reality, fantasy, and dream without getting bogged down in academic jargon.

[Anna Juliet Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Concise and informative book to aid in the understanding of Buñuel's directing style and Catherine Deneuve's character, Sévérine in the film Belle de Jour

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another BFI film classics book (two to go out of the fifteen I checked out in December!) This one is on the 1967 film by Luis Bu��uel, with Catherine Deneuve. The author considers this as the first film of his "late" or "French" period; one of the major themes is putting it in the context of his other works. I've seen a few, but all more than thirty years ago; I watched this one on youtube before reading the book, I think for the first time. The film is very ambiguous and the author has some good insights into it without really resolving it, which would not be possible without falsifying it. An interesting book about an interesting film.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deneuve was among the most heedless actors in cinema, given her gorgeous mainstream glamour.