Camille Claudel | 
| Director: Bruno Nuytten
Actors: Isabelle Adjani, Gerard Depardieu, Laurent Grevill, Alain Cuny, Madeleine Robinson
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.98
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Rating:  41 reviews
Sales Rank: 9544
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dvd-video, Letterboxed, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: French (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Picture Format: Letterbox
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 159 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.1 x 0.6
MPN: 1001477
ISBN: 0792848411
UPC: 027616857972
EAN: 9780792848417
ASIN: B000053VBM
Theatrical Release Date: December 21, 1989
Release Date: January 23, 2001
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Amazon.com
"Miss Claudel has become a master."
"She has the talent of a man."
"She's a witch."
And so Auguste Rodin and friends neatly sum up the sad trajectory of Camille Claudel's career. We first meet the sculptor as she digs clay with bare fingers from a frozen ditch, in the winter of 1885. By the time the film leaves her, in 1913, she's an acclaimed, if socially scorned, artist who's been committed to an asylum. In the interim, Claudel (Isabelle Adjani) falls in love with the famous, older, womanizing Rodin (Gerard Depardieu). Claudel abandons her work to assist the creatively bankrupt Rodin, filling in as his muse, assistant, and lover. When pregnancy forces Claudel to ask him to choose between her and his longtime mistress, he won't, she leaves, and their alliance ends. This proves to be the turning point for Claudel's mental health; when her affair with Rodin ends, she begins her intimacy with insanity. As her madness blooms, so do her long-neglected sculptures, which seem to come to life in her hands and arms. Not only a potent love story, Camille Claudel is also an account of art and its wellsprings, and this is where it excels, especially when we witness Claudel's manic genius at work, driven by the necessity to externalize her emotions in the forms of her sculptures. In the end, the viewer wonders about the causes of Claudel's madness: was it genes, or her reaction against society's mores, or the product of Rodin's persecution? Or, as one exasperated family member terms it, was it "the madness of mud"? --Stefanie Durbin
Description
International screen star Isabelle Adjani (The Story Of Adele H., Ishtar) is the creative prodigy Camille Claudel. GA(c)rard Depardieu (Green Card, Cyrano de Bergerac) is thelegendary sculptor Rodin. This is the true story of their passionate obsession with artand with each other. Both an inspiring saga of artistic vision and the haunting portrayal of a doomed romance, Camille Claudel is a beautiful and stirring cinematic masterpiece. A historically accurate depiction of one of the most important collaborations in the history of modern art, Camille Claudel was nominated for the 1989 Academy AwardA(r) for Best Foreign Language Film,and Adjani was nominated for the 1989 OscarA(r) for Best Actress for her riveting portrayalof the beautiful young woman who sacrifices her talents to flames of passion.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 36 more reviews...
 A tragic fall for a talented young artist November 14, 2008
C. B Collins Jr. (Atlanta, GA United States)
Camille Claudel was the young talented studio assistant to Auguste Rodin who became his muse and lover at a point in his career when he was a commercial success but had become devoid of inspiration. When he refused to leave his common-law wife of many years to marry Camille, she had an abortion and then gradually sunk into paranoid schizophrenia. This is the basic story. However the subtle manner in which the story is told and the unresolved issues in the life of Claudel elevate the film into a work of art.
The film explores the artistic muse and their relationship with the artist. Camille was a muse in that her images were fresh and vibrant which inspired Rodin. She was also a willful and socially disruptive iconoclastic young women and Rodin is attracted to her outbursts of emotion. He is twice her age and becomes her lover even though he has a common-law wife that he has no intention of leaving. Their collaborations on his sculptures inspired some of his best work. Yet her father wisely knew that she was losing herself in Rodin, putting her inspiration into his products, elevating his career and not her own. It is the nature of the artist to draw from all experiences and resources around him/her for the benefit of their art. Picasso's paintings when he is in love and inspired by a woman are very different from when he is rejecting the woman and he paints her as a monster. The relationship between Rodin and Claudel somewhat reminded me of the relationship between Francis Bacon and George Dyer in the film, Love is the Devil. Once Dyer reached the point where he no longer inspired Bacon and was in fact a liability due to alcoholism and addiction and mental illness, then Bacon withdraws in much the way Rodin withdraws from Claudel as she becomes increasingly disturbed.
The film is very beautiful to watch. The scenes of Paris and the countryside around the city, as well as the museums and exhibition halls in Paris are very beautiful and grand. The acting is superb with Isabelle Adjani and Gerard Depardieu dominating every scene. Adjani has the ability to play highly disturbed women to perfection. She is in virtually every scene in the film. It is virtually impossible not to watch her when she is on the screen.
 WARNING: DVD IS CUT BY 13 MINUTES! July 23, 2008
Huston Huddleston (Sherman Oaks, CA USA)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
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!
 a fascinating woman and artist ... broken under a world which did respectively she could not open up June 29, 2008
Don Alegre (bei Muenchen)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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
 Great story...slow moving... June 4, 2008
D. Kanigan (CT, USA)
This movie is based on the life of Camille Claudel (1864-1943) who was a beautiful and talented French sculptor. She gets support from her Father early on in her passionate pursuit of her artistic development however he eventually climbs on the side of her despicable Mother who looks for Camille to take a more traditional path in life (wife, mother, etc).
Rodin, considered by many to be one of the world's greatest sculptors, took on Camille as a mentee and quickly learned that in many ways her talents exceeded his. Rodin, twice her age, falls in love with Claudel and she with him. Claudel presses Rodin to marry her after learning that she is pregnant however Rodin refuses to commit to her or to any woman for that matter. Claudel reluctantly walks away from him and eventually loses her mind when she sees that Rodin goes on surviving without her. She becomes convinced that Rodin and his supporters were out to steal her work and her best ideas and she eventually is institutionalized for 30 years until her death at 78 years of age.
I found the story to be engaging and the cinematography to be first rate. However this nearly 3 hour movie was a bit slow moving for me and certain parts were hard to reconcile (Claudel barely ages throughout the movie - Rodin's ability to walk away from Claudel after she is such a great inspiration and love to him - her odd relationship with her brother.)
Camille Claudel - a must see May 22, 2008
Susan Hunt (New Zealand)
The story of Camille Claudel is a 'must see' for anyone interested in the role of women in the 19th century who are up against the power and status of men - matters still relevant in the 21st century - despite feminism. This movie is about family and personal relationships, patriarchial systems, how women were once labelled mentally ill (or driven to it) through the pursuit of exploring and demonstrating their creativity, talent and genius. After watching this movie the memory of Camille Claudel,her work and courage lives on and is much respected.
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