Behind The Scenes: Luis Buñuel & Catherine Deneuve On The Set Of BELLE DU JOUR

Belle Du Jour is probably the great Luis Buñuel’s most famous and most successful film. The 1967 drama sees Catherine Deneuve play a bored housewife who decides to pass her afternoons by working in a brothel. Sounds saucy, but Luis Buñuel’s surrealist stylings means that there’s much more to this than meets the eye. This is a classy piece of abstract cinema and it offers up an off-kilter look at marriage in France. Deneuve is excellent, and she brings across a naiveté and world-weariness which gives her character a lot of complexity.

Released at the height of the French New Wave in the 1960s, Belle Du Jour helped cement Luis Buñuel‘s reputation as an iconic filmmaker, while it also made Deneuve an international star.

This behind the scenes image shows Buñuel and Deneuve on the set of Belle Du Jour. The film grossed $4.15 million globally during its release in 1967.