Customer Reviews

Camille Claudel

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A few years ago, on a beautiful sunny March day, I visited the house and grounds of the Rodin museum, formerly the home of Auguste Rodin. The museum sits very near a hospital Napoleon commissioned and is in a central tourist area, but it was not overrun with tourists the day I visited.

The weather was so nice, I decided to have lunch in the pavillion on the grounds and eventually spent half a day wondering around the various scuptures situated indoors and outside. The 'Thinker' sat contemplating a nearby bush while a little bird landed on his shoulder, and Balzac looked down in triump from his pedestal. But, inside the house, I found a little room dedicated to the work of Camille Claudel, and here I paused the longest. It struck me then that while Rodin dealt with the external, Claudel dealt with the internal--the soul. I'm a small fan of sculpture, but the marble pieces Claudel worked with her hands are amazing. "Life-like" does not say enough. One piece, a marble bust of a child's head and shoulders took my breath away. I kept waiting for the child to breathe. I checked to see if she was breathing. The only pieces I have seen that are comparable were executed by Micheangelo.

The film CAMILLE CLAUDEL is worthy of the heroine and her sad story. Rodin treated her badly, if for no other reason than he had no right to become sexually involved with her when she was his employee and he was a married man. Today he would be locked up for sexual harrassment, and Claudel would not spend most of her life locked up because she became "hysterical" after he dumped her.

But, Rodin's greatest sin may have been that he became involved with Claudel because he recognized her genius and he wanted to exploit it. Although Rodin certainly had some interesting ideas, which he managed to execute in a prolific way (the Rodin house shows a continuous and ridiculous film of Rodin "creating" a sculpture), I don't think he was terribly innovative. In fact, if the "Thinker" had not been made into book ends, most people would probably not know who Rodin was.

Isabel Adjani plays Claudel. She is perfectly cast as Camille, and her performance is as stunning as it was in Queen Margo. Adjani is one of France's best living actresses--in fact, I think she is the best. Gerhard Depardieu plays Rodin, and he well cast as the large, beefy, inarticulate, egocentric artist. In fact, he looks exactly like the man in the little film I saw in Paris, just as Adjani looks like the Claudel from her portraits.

The film was shot in Paris, and much of the footage taken at the Rodin museum, a Chateau constructed by a 18th Century Aristocrat who died at the hands of Madame Guilliotine. Buy the film and then visit the Rodin museum in Paris to see Claudel's work.

This USA butchered DVD release has 13 minutes cut from it, excluding major plot points, whole sequences, violence, nudity and characters. This is NOT a review of the film, merely this substandard, shoddy MGM release. The UNCUT version on DVD is available in the UK, France, Spain, Italy, basically everywhere in the world but here!

I began watching this film on a late night of insomnia....it didn't help me to sleep and that's a good thing!

Isabelle Adjani artfully plays real life French sculpturess, Camille Claudel. She displays pure emotion and passionate reactions such that she is completely believable as the tragic yet talented Claudel. Claudel becomes Auguste Rodin's assistant and eventual lover/muse. They fight and compete for fame together and seperately with Claudel always the more talented but underscored by Rodin's jealously and fierce connections to the art world. In the end Claudel succumbs to a broken and ravaged heart betrayed in many ways by her one true love, Rodin.

I recently returned from a trip to Paris and having seen first hand the sculptures created by Claudel and Rodin I am even more impressed with this tragic story of talented yet conflicted artists. To see the obvious gentleness with which Claudel can carve marble and to feel the warmth that stems from a slab of cold stone left me mesmerized by her talent. Rodin appears clumsy and inept next to her creations despite his world reknown fame. I will always wonder what a woman of her talent could have created had she been alive today and not under the influence of an egotistical maniac!

Camille Claudel was a sculptor in a time when women were discouraged from art - and especially from that most muscular of arts, sculpture. Such was her genius, though, that she was accepted as Rodin's student. He supported her career, both as his assitant and as an artist in her own right. Some people say that her skill outstripped even his.

Why, then, is her work so little known today? Certainly not because it's appeal faded with time. It still has all the power to move a viewer that it ever did. The reason is probably that there was so very little of her work, and even less extant today. Her career lasted only a few of her adult years. Illness of mind drove her from the people and venues that supported her, and drove her to destroy much of her own work. In the end, illness left her unable even to care for herself. She was hospitalized in 1913, and died in 1943 without regaining her sanity, her freedom, or her career.

This lovely movie documents her life up to 1913. It shows her early promise, her rise to success, and her collapse into incapacity. The basic historical facts, to the best of my knowledge, are sound, but may have been stretched in a few places. Her relationship with Rodin is shown, but may not have been given the emphasis it warranted. Her removal to the hospital for the insane is shown, too, but may not have been the peaceable affair displayed here. No matter. Claudel the artist deserves the attention, and Claudel the woman leaves us asking what wonders that illness stole from her and from history.

//wiredweird

Adjani is one of the most passionate performers I have ever seen. There are two scenes where she yells at Rodin that are very dramatic and emotional and you feel her pain, one is where she is yelling at him in her studio and another where she is yelling his name outside his home. Depardieu is amazing as Rodin. I don't speak French and followed by the subtitles. I would have never known "Camille Claudel" existed until this movie. She was brilliant, passionate, and it's a shame that she was driven mad by Rodin because she would have been the "female Michelangelo" but wound up spending her last years in a mental institution and most of her sculptures ruined and destroyed by her madness. A must see!

I went into this movie not expecting to like it as much as I did, but it was fantastic. The acting is incredible and the story is fascinating - this movie will stay with you for a long time. I personally was so moved that I went out and read several books on Rodin and Camille Claudel and find out as much as I could about them and their relationship

One of Isabelle Adjani's best qualities is that no matter what character she plays, she's always convincing. 1988's "Camille Claudel" is probably her most passionate, convincing performance. From the film's moving start, to its tragic end, there is never a dull moment. Easily handling a full range of emotions, Adjani manages to charm us, sadden us and even frighten us. This is a long movie but never once did I tire of it or lose intrest. Before this movie, I had no idea who Camille Claudel was. After seeing it, I was moved to find out as much about her and her sculptures as I possibly could. Along with Adjani, Gerard Depardieu deserves credit for his outstanding performance as Rodin. Production values are meticulous right down to the smallest details. While several great movies come out every year, very few "classics" manage to break through. "Camille Claudel" is one of those who thank God, managed to do so.

Prior to the 1988 release of this powerful biopic, Camille Claudel was but a footnote in history, the almost forgotten sister of the great 19th century French poet Paul Claudel. But since this movie, Paul has been relegated to being known as Camille's brother. Isabelle Adjani dominates the film in the title role as a young sculptor studying with and having a disastrous affair with the great sculptor Rodin. Gerard Depardieu delivers his usual forceful performance as Rodin, but never overshadows Adjani. The central issue of the film is the lack of credit that the woman sculptor receives because of societal prejudice. The script goes so far as to strongely imply that she was the real genius and that Rodin borrowed from her. This angle continues to make the film very popular with the female audience. Although the packaging on this video proclaims that this is "a historically accurate depiction", some skepticism is in order. I have visited the Rodin museum in Paris a number of times where sculptures by both Rodin and Claudel are on display. These works make it clear that Rodin did great things before, during, and after his affair with Claudel, whereas Claudel did great work only during her time with Rodin, and relatively mediocre work before and after. The observer is free to come to his own conclusions. In any event, the film is a well-spent two and one half hours, and the Orion video has clear yellow subtitles for those who don't know French.

First saw this film in 1989 when it came out. Purchased this copy after the Detroit Institute of Arts Claudel/Rodin exhibit. Beautifully filmed. Poignant portrayal of Auguste Rodin and Camille Claudel's tumultuous relationship as artist and protege. Adjani and Depardieu, as well as everyone else give powerful performances. Film dwells more on the sensuality and subsequent madness of the relationship and doesn't focus on the fact that they eventually considered themselves equals in their art, how strongly they influenced each other and how much they actually worked together. Still a good buy and well worth multiple viewings.

A life in-between mania and raging passion
This touching movie - shot in following the biography written by Reine-Marie Paris - respects Camille Claudel and her tragic life most powerfully.

Isabell Adjani who pictures an amazingly striking similarity of the original gets herself as actress brilliantly into Claudel's personality which again and again links up a paranoid disorder with a brilliant sculptor in her own right and kind on its way down to an obsessively self created social withdrawal, unavoidably for women at those time.
Absorbingly, impressively and intensely Adani dominates for nearly 3 hours this dramatic course of paranoid schizophrenia of this extraordinary lady artist, an illness which is nurtured by affective, creative and wrecking actions and "happenings" and which - in a world dominated by men - has impeded her development of a successful and harmonious sculptress.

Undoubtedly, Claudel's fascinating fine art works of "A revolt against nature: a woman genius" [Octave Mirbeau] emerged from an intensive and artistically minded, worthwhile love affair with Auguste Rodin, perfectly played by Depardieu, a relationship which supported Rodin by its discrepancy and conflict as well but which, however, finally ended for Claudel in apathy and paranoia after a life of dissipation.

This movie is really genially directed by Nuytten and shows without beating about the bush or any kind of glorification this tragically ending, close companionship, a companionship which could have guided both to a cohabitation but - paradoxically supporting their individual great artistic intentions - split them instead due to two distinctly conflictive and contrary emotions and reasons.

... a most convincing und straight forward documentation about the 1st half of the life of a highly gifted artist