Bunuel_Luis_My_Last_Breath

From Spain to Mexico to France (1960-1977) 241directly opposite his; so he came over, drank a bottle ofwhiskey withme, and we've been friends ever since. After a lot of talk, we agreedto do an adaptation of Octave Mirbeau's Journal d'unefmme de chambre(Diary of a Chambermaid), a book I'd read many times. But to makethe story more accessible, we decided to set the film in the 1920sachange that also allowed the right-wing demonstrators to shout"Vive Chiappe!" at the end, in memory of L'Age d'w.It was Louis Malle, in Ascenseur pour I'khafaud, who introducedthe world to Jeanne Moreau's incredible way of walking. I myselfhave always liked to watch the way women walk, and filming Jeannein Diary of a Chambermaid was a great pleasure; when she walks, herfoot trembles just a bit on its high heel, suggesting a certain tensionand instability. Jeanne is a marvelous actress, and I kept my directionsto a minimum, content for the most part just to follow herwith the camera. In fact, she taught me things about the charactershe played that I'd never suspected were there.The film was shot in Paris and in Milly-la-For& during the fallof 1963. It was the first time I'd worked with Pierre Lary (myassistant), Suzanne Durremberger (an excellent script girl), and Jean-Claude Carrihre, who plays the priest and with whom I've continuedto collaborate on all my French movies. One of the highlights of theshoot was meeting Muni, a singular actress with a very unconventionallife-style who became a kind of mascot for us. She played thepart of the most menial servant, but had one of the best exchangesin the movie."Why are you always talking about killing Jews?" she asks thefanatical sexton."Aren't you a patriot?" he retorts."Yes. ""So?"After Diary of a Chambermaid, Silberman told me to keep righton going, so I decided to try adapting "Monk" Lewis's marvelousgothic novel, The Monk. The book figured prominently in the surrealistcanon and had been translated into French by Antonin Artaud.