Céleste Albaret

"In Search of Marcel Proust" is a 1962 literary documentary directed by the Italian poet Attilio Bertolucci. It serves as a biographical and critical journey into the world of Marcel Proust, blending readings from his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time, with rare filmed testimonies from those who knew him personally, including his housekeeper Céleste Albaret and friends like Jean Cocteau and François Mauriac.

This documentary is a portrait of Proust composed of recollections by those who knew him. Intercut with reading from his works.

From Venice to Illiers, a journey into the memory of Proust. Freely intersperses documentary language with fiction, embodied in the figure of a visitor in search of the places and faces that Proust loved, from the Illiers-Combray of his childhood to the longed-for Venice that he never got to know.