Sculpting the Life of Camille Claudel into Film

 

There was once a sculptor of unique creative genius who, at the early age of fifteen, completed a masterpiece and was already gaining recognition in periodicals of the day. This sculptor’s art would later be characterized as “taking on the tenacity of life,” and as “the manifestation of man’s romantic dream”. No matter how auspicious the artist’s future was, two things prohibited the sculptor from complete success: a dormant mental illness and the fact that this sculptor was a woman. Not only a woman, but a woman who chanced to be the apprentice of the world famous sculptor known to all as Auguste Rodin. She was to forever remain in his shadow, never achieving her glory which became his, and never being seen as an artist in her own right. Her name was Camille Claudel.

 

Bruno Nuytten’s film documenting the life of this successful artist, Camille Claudel, refutes these assumptions. The film contests critics’ ideas that her art was influenced by Rodin’s genius, and instead emphasizes the extent of the impact that he had on her emotional and mental condition. Rather than Camille’s art, Nuytten depicts Rodin’s as being strongly influenced by Claudel’s. By basing the film off of the biography written by Claudel’s grandniece, Reine-Marie Paris, the director “attempts to establish Claudel’s own claims to greatness” (Hinson). Hardly distorting fact in the production, Nuytten uses aesthetic effects and dialogue to bring the truest representation of Camille Claudel’s life to the screen.

 

The first of Camille Claudel’s fatal flaws – her mental illness – is a subject of debate among art historians. Her handicap can either be viewed as an inborn trait, meaning that she was predetermined to end up in a mental asylum. The other possibility is that she can be viewed as the “victim of a neurotic obsession which deformed and exaggerated the perceptions of her healthy mind” (Paris 63).

 

Bruno Nuytten depicts Camille Claudel’s mental illness as being present from the start of her life. Her sickness, though soon to be elicited by Auguste Rodin, lay dormant. All throughout the movie Nuytten uses darkness symbolically to allude to the mental illness latent in Camille’s mind. The first time the camera meets Camille she is concealed in the darkness of a muddy ditch, scraping away at the bowels of the earth for clay. Dressed in rags and caked in mud, she is completely engrossed in the shadows and entranced by her labor. She labors for her passion, and in this sense, Camille deliberately puts herself in the dark. Not just here, but in every scene, a sort of darkness lingers over her face, suggesting that she is held captive by this darkness. With her inside the shadows, Nuytten creates the effect that Camille is already shut away in an asylum.

 

The director’s series of foreshadows continues with the image and chiming of a coo-coo clock in Jessie Lipscomb– the English roommate who remained close friends with Camille throughout her life – and Camille’s apartment (Paris 6). Minutes before the arrival of Rodin, the two girls are startled by the sudden toll of the clock. One cannot be sure if Nuytten intentionally used a coo-coo clock particularly because its connotation of lunacy, or of an individual gone “coo-coo.” Placed at the beginning of the film, the image and sound of the clock is suggestive of Camille’s future mental illness.

 

In the film, the sculptress’ family speaks words that warn of Camille’s impending fate. In one of the earliest scenes, Camille’s mother shouts her indignation for her daughter, screaming, “She should be shut away!” In truth, it was Louise Claudel who partook in the decision to send Camille to the psychiatric hospital in Ville-Évrard later in 1913 (Paris 81). Louise “blamed and condemned her,” and detested her pursuit for art from the start (20). She found it unladylike and a filthy occupation. She wrote letters to the hospital, imploring that they not release Camille. In 1915 she wrote, “At no cost do I want to remove her from your establishment…as far as taking her back with me or sending her home like she was, never, never” (81). Nuytten accurately portrays Louise. It is not doubtful that words like these were heard in the Claudel household years before Camille was in fact, “shut away.”

Paul, brother and only confidant of Camille, says to her at one point during the film, “He who is a legend in his own time is ruled by that legend.” His words, although taken from another man’s genius, were meant to console her at a time when she was doubting her abilities. However, they allude to one of Camille’s fatal flaws: her passion for sculpting. Camille is ruled by her “legend.” As the film shows, she is completely absorbed by her drive to sculpt and create. Jessica Lipscomb says to her in the film, “You have the madness of mud…It’s all work for you, Camille.” It is this passion that ultimately pulls her away from other people. In the film and in life, Camille locks herself up in her apartment with her work and boards the windows. As Paris explains it, “Camille was committing suicide bit by bit” (70). During Camille’s final stages of reclusion Eugene Blot confides to Camille in the film, “Act sensible instead of burying yourself alive. This is suicide.” Paul Claudel’s comforting words ironically foreshadow Camille’s imminent ruin.

 

The sound track that Nuytten selects – a tumultuous rise and fall of minor tones and crying violins – suggests the tumult brewing in Camille’s mind. The poignancy of sound and pitch evokes a sort of melancholy even while the beginning credits scroll across the screen. Nuytten warns that this story will not have a happy ending. With music, and again darkness, he gives viewers an acute awareness for the doom of Adjani’s character. One scene in particular is when Camille whispers to Rodin for the first time, “Je t’aime, je t’aime.” While she says this, the two are standing in a blanket of shadow. In fact, it is so dark that the screen is black. Right at this moment, the sound track comes thundering in. An extremely low, deep tone rumbles in the background, as if by saying “I love you,” Camille has brought on a terrible storm – one which from that time on will never cease.

 

Though Nuytten is careful not to convey the idea that Rodin himself was responsible for Camille’s mental collapse, he shows that Camille’s relations with Rodin triggered, rather than caused the emergence of her illness. Camille’s mental illness is recorded as having started around the time when he and she separated: “The first signs of her emotional imbalance occurred right after she broke off with him around 1893” (75). But rather than highlight this fact, Nuytten chooses to illustrate the immediate effects that a possible abortion had on her, supporting the opinion that it was Camille’s female sex that contributed to her lack of recognition, inability to function rationally, and finally her downfall. Paris’ biography of Camille reveals that the likelihood that an abortion occurred is “inferred from correspondence,” but that there is no solid evidence of pregnancy or abortive action (Paris 13). In the film, Camille begins to disintegrate right after she finds out that she is pregnant. Instead of filling the frame with a close-up of Adjani’s face as the film often does, she is instead faceless at this moment. The camera shows the back of her head, motionless as she dresses herself behind the blinds in a doctor’s office. Next, she exits the building wearing sunglasses and stumbling in her steps as if she were paralyzed and knew not where or how to move. In the following scene Camille chisels at a piece of marble, but she soon tires and presses her face against her sculpture, hiding it beneath the darkness cast by her folded arms. The look in her eyes illustrates the first sign of chaos. From here on in the movie Nuytten displays Camille’s mind crumbling at an exponential rate through intense close-ups of her face.

 

Nuytten takes a different direction than does Reine-Marie Paris’ biography regarding the love affair between Claudel and Rodin. The director depicts a Camille seriously attached and emotionally involved, whereas the writer tells of a Camille whose “affection for Rodin was tempered and quite rational” (Paris 15). In fact, no one can know for sure the extent to which Camille’s relationship with Rodin affected her sanity. Paris writes: “There is no proof that Camille was ever passionately in love with Rodin. Her letters show none of the signs usual to that state… The letters she wrote to her lover have a more flirtatious than affectionate ring” (15). Camille’s relationship with Rodin appears to have been mostly about her using him – whether for physical pleasure or artistic benefits – rather than her being in love with him. “Camille was never blinded by passion” (16). It is noted that a “caste barrier” existed between the two sculptors, where “Camille referred to Rodin as ‘Monsieur Rodin’ while he always called his young mistress ‘Mademoiselle Claudel’ (15).” Clearly, as Paris points out, two people who regard each other in this manner could not possibly regard each other on any other level besides the professional. Letters and other biographical data do not depict Camille as emotionally attached to Rodin as does Nuytten’s film.

 

Camille Claudel shows an artist so entirely involved with a man that she forgets to live out her own artistic passions. When this man refuses to marry her, she disintegrates into a state of insanity. Nuytten’s Camille’s mental collapse, as well as her artistic failures, are fully attributed to Rodin’s mistreatment of her. Audiences see a girl so enthralled with this man that she is moved to tell him, “I’m the happiest woman in the world.” When Rodin refuses to marry Camille, she breaks away from him and immediately plummets into a steady slope of descent involving self-neglect, seclusion, and the conviction that Rodin is the reason for her failure to succeed. While she and he were together, her father alerts her: “Since you met Rodin you’ve done no work of your own…your future belongs to you.” But Nuytten proves that Camille’s future does not belong to her – it belongs to Rodin. Only after she leaves him does she turn out a larger number of sculptures. Despite her fervent labors she is unsuccessful, and Nuytten attributes this failure chiefly to the emotional impact Rodin has on Camille. In a passionate and intense argument between her and Rodin, Camille screams at him, asserting: “You stole it all! My youth, my work! Everything!” She accredits Rodin with her losses. In regards to his refusal to marry her, she utters at him, “Even on your deathbed you’ll hesitate!” Sources prove that Nuytten chose these lines carefully. According to Judith Cladel, Rodin’s biographer, Rodin, when laying in his deathbed, “asked to see his ‘wife,’ and when Rose Beuret (whom he had just married) was shown in, he murmured as if in a dream, ‘No, not her, the other one, the one in Paris” (Paris 18). These facts reveal that it was Rodin, more so than Claudel, who suffered more emotionally in life.

 

Though Nuytten’s film portrays Rodin as the one to blame for Camille’s emotional trauma, Paris’ biography writes about Rodin in a different nature. Rodin suffered just as emotionally, or even more so than did Claudel. As his last words suggest, Rodin “seems to have had a particularly strong emotional attachment to his pupil” (16). Critics believe that Camille’s attachment was the more severe of the two, and that evidence of this is reflected in similarities between her and his sculpture. They feel that it was her work that benefited from Rodin’s. Paris objects to this. She claims that “Rodin’s sculptures are mute testimony to his sincere affection and attachment to Camille” (Paris 17). She asserts that although “the manual work of both of them is very similar if not identical,” it was Rodin who copied Claudel (169). Paris continues to back up this statement by resorting to the fact that Rodin was “over forty, past his prime, and out of touch with his creative sources” (64). Meeting Camille “showed him a new avenue” (64).

 

Bruno Nuytten emphasizes Paris’s position by putting words in Gérard Depardieu’s mouth like, “Without her I don’t know. She’s my only source of inspiration. What does she have that I have lost?” He shows Rodin fully engaged by Camille’s talents.

 

She is first seen as his inspiration in the film when she stands between the two Adam’s on top of one of Rodin’s most acclaimed works, “The Gates of Hell.” Though Camille poses there only out of a mocking jest, Rodin gets his first glimpse at Camille’s talent. An indirect result of this is that Camille has demonstrated her power over his sculpture; her ability to influence him with her skill.

 

During the early years of Camille’s apprenticeship with Rodin, he produced many sculptures bearing strong resemblances to Camille’s work. One of her works that is often linked to Rodin’s is her “Çacountala”. Note the strong likeness that Rodin’s “The Eternal Idol” bears to it. The former depicts a sense of female surrender, perhaps that felt by Camille towards her teacher. Rodin’s sculpture instead shows a veneration of the female figure by the male, which can be interpreted as his feelings towards his student. Both of these works may be each artist’s interpretation of the same relationship. However, one cannot deny the similarities illustrated in these pieces. “Rodin’s critics agree that the style he developed in the 1880’s coincides with his meeting Camille” (Paris 64). That style bore too many likenesses to Camille’s that it would be unfair to characterize Rodin’s work at that time as his “own.”

Nuytten supports this opinion. In his film, he shows how Camille’s creativity plagues Rodin just as poignantly as Rodin plagues Camille’s emotions. Rodin mutters to himself a comment directed at Camille, “At least you know what moves you. I no longer know.” He is regretful that he no longer possesses the passion that he observes residing inside Claudel. With this line Nuytten suggests that Rodin was hungry for inspiration, and may have fed off of Camille’s genius in order to satiate his appetite.

 

Just as Paris writes in Camille’s biography: “Rodin was haunted not only by Camille’s body but also by her face,” Nuytten shows a table covered with a dozen busts of Camille, showing the extent of Rodin’s obsession with her (Paris 9). He acts out his fascination of her by sculpting her numerous times in many manners.

 

To stress the originality of Camille’s work, Nuytten shows a presumptuous Rodin criticizing Claudel of copying him. In more than one instance, while looking at her sculptures, Depardieu remarks, “If you want to copy the head of my Adam...” followed by a quick reproach from Adjani: “I didn’t.” She taunts him, asking, “Are you afraid I surpassed you?” He replies, “No, but that you copied maybe….” Rodin’s quick judgments are stabs he takes at Camille that Nuytten shows as insecurity, or as arrogance. He shouts at her: “Everything comes from me – nothing from you!” The director defends Claudel while he attacks Rodin. The originality of her work belongs to her – not him. Camille is made to be the superior artist; the tragic one who lost her chance at fame only because she was trapped in the shadow of a man – a man with equal or perhaps even lesser talent.

 

Of all the symbolism Bruno Nuytten utilizes in Camille Claudel, perhaps the most effective image is that final scene of Camille burying her sculpture where she was first seen extracting mud at the beginning of the film. Camille’s life ends where it begins: in the mud. She is burying her sculptures in the very mud that she created them from. Nuytten’s conclusion about Camille is in this sense also a melancholy one. By tying the beginning and the end together as he does, he shows the futility of her life. Despite all her efforts and emotional and mental suffering Camille Claudel arrived at nowhere. Her beginning was her end.

Paul Claudel’s last lines in the film conclude the story suitably. As he looks upon his sister’s boarded apartment moments before she is taken away to the psychiatric hospital, he reflects, “The gifts Nature gave her brought only unhappiness. It’s a total catastrophe.” He is right. How did Camille’s life go awry? What a tragedy is this sculptress, whose abilities were not enough for her to triumph over the achievements of a man – her artistic equal – and a mental illness emphasized and inflicted by him. Since a century of history could not give Claudel the recognition that she righteously deserved, Bruno Nuytten gives it to her in his gallant attempt to honor the artistic genius, Camille Claudel. © Rebecca Spolarich

French Cimema and Society Honors

Professor Garreau

December 20th 2002

 

WORKS CITED

 Hinson, Hal. “Review of Camille Claudel.” Washington Post 21 December 1991.

Paris, Reine-Marie. Camille: The Life of Camille Claudel, Rodin’s Muse and Mistres. New York: Seaver Books, 1988.