From Novel to Film Claude Chabrol's Adaptations of Ruth Rendell's Novels: La Cérémonie and La Demoiselle d'Honneur

When a novel is adapted into a film, it is not infrequent to hear the audience discredit the audiovisual version and claim their disappointment. A member of the creative Nouvelle Vague movement in the 1960s, French film director Claude Chabrol has adapted a considerable number of novels on screen along his career. This book aims to analyse Chabrol's adaptations of two novels by British novelist Ruth Rendell, namely A Judgement in Stone and The Bridesmaid, into features entitled La Ceremonie and La Demoiselle d'Honneur. Based on a thorough analysis of the narrative features of the adaptation process, the book then studies the importance of the filmic genre and its applications within the afore-mentioned corpus. Lastly, the styles of Rendell's writings and Chabrol's films are comparatively defined. An introduction into both filmic adaptation and into the works of Claude Chabrol, this book may also be used in the focus of film genre studies and narratology."