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
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.