Rodin’s mistress and his muse

Press, 22 July 1989, Page 24

Rodin’s mistress and his muse

Camille: The Life of Camille Claudel, Rodin’s Mistress and Muse. By Reine-Marie Paris, translated from French by Lilians Emery Tuck. Aurum, 1988. 258 pp. $49,95. (Reviewed by Mark Stocker) “All that has happened to me is The making of ‘Radio Days’

Woody Alien on Location. By Thierry de Navacelle. Sidgwick Softbacks. 464 pp. Illustrated. In “Woody Allen on Location," Thierry de Navacelle, a French writer on the cinema, takes the reader behind the camera with a detailed, day-by-day account of the making of the comedian-director’s “Radio Days” in 1986.

De Navacelle was there to record the first four months of the principal photography round New York, the reshooting process, up to the preparation of the rough cut, and the final print. There is some mention of the creative process, but little is learned about the elusive Allen. '

This illustrated book also contains a chronological order of the scenes as they appear in the final script — including many that were omitted from the actual film.

For me, “Radio Days” is by far the best — and funniest — film by Allen in recent years, so this book proved of some interest. Otherwise, “Woody Alien on Location” is strictly for the movie buff.— Hans Petrdvic.

more than a novel, it is an epic, an Iliad or an Odyssey, but it would need a Homer to recount it,” wrote Camille Claudel, vegetating in an asylum. Unfortunately Reine-Marie Paris, Claudel’s great-niece and biographer, is no Homer, and by all accounts Isabelle Adjani in the title role of the new film “Camille Claudel” is no Garbo. Claudel’s life is the stuff of films. Beautiful, headstrong and talented, from childhood sculpture was her obsession. She first met Rodin, the “homme fatale” of her life, in 1883, when she was 18 and he 42. It was then far from clear that Rodin would emerge as a great sculptor but Claudel had no doubts, becoming his pupil, assistant and lover.

Initially Rodin was besotted with her, but the tables soon turned with Claudel imploring him “Don't deceive me with other women.” She failed to contend with Rose Beuret, Rodin’s model, mistress and minder. One side of the triangle had to give and, predictably, it was Claudel. With estrangement in 1898 came her persecution complex, characterised by hysterical denunciations of Rodin. Claudel led an increasingly reclusive, and degraded life with 12 cats as her only companions. Annually she destroyed her sculptures. When her father died in 1913 she was comriiltted to a mental institution where she remained until her own death in 1943. Her letters, published here, make sad reading and reinforce the sense of creative .jiss. Claudel's achievement is impressive

enough and is copiously illustrated here. Irritatingly, the plates are neither arranged in correct chronological order nor are the crossreferenced in the text. In her “Rodlnesque” phase it is sometimes impossible to separate their works, though Rodin took the credit. This should not automatically be ascribed to Rodin’s flagrant sexism but to the familiar roles of master and ghost. Claudel certainly made Rodin’s work more passionate, erotic and contorted. Attempts by her brother, the poet and playwright Paul Claudel, to describe her work as chaste reflect his primness rather than her art or character. After leaving Rodin, Claudel tried to establish her own reputation with statuettes of gossiping

women and fireside scenes. These have been linked with Pop Art but are closer to nineteenth-century Italian realism which survives today in namby-pamby Capodimonte figurines. While one recognises that ReineMarie Paris is no art historian, regrettably Claudel’s statement, “I don’t understand a thing about theoretical questions in matters concerning art” applies to the author too. Pomposity prevails: “Do Camille Claude’s manner, style and search really provide us with a unique truth that is viable after so many upheavals, so many often gratuitous and insignificant innovations have transformed our taste?” Until a better biography appears, the interested reader should consult the relevant chapter, in Frederic Grunfeld's “Rodint A Biography.”