Stardom and historical thinking in Isabelle Adjani’s French heritage film Camille Claudel

Abstract

Stardom plays an important role in heritage film, a contemporary genre of costume drama and historical film. Stars’ on-screen and off-screen presences, their star personas and world views, powerfully impact heritage films’ historical reconstitutions, potentially influencing the spectator’s ‘historical thinking’ and critical engagement with the past. A genre of popular and art-house/auteur cinema, heritage film provides a setting where renowned actors and actresses may assume a ‘politics of stars’, operating as ‘star-auteurs’ who offer a meaningful contribution to films’ depictions of prior eras through their unique incarnation of historical figures. In the star-led phenomenon of heritage biopics, stars’ roles can be instrumental in impacting the viewer’s historical understanding. Iconic French Cinema star Isabelle Adjani has appeared in several crucial roles in heritage film, most notably her incarnation of Belle Époque artist and sculptress Claudel in the 1988 biopic Camille Claudel. In her adaptation of Reine-Marie Paris’s original 1984 biography, Adjani’s specific star presence forcefully influences the film’s portrait of Parisian art worlds, salons, galleries, artists’ studios, and workshops in turn-of-the century France. Through close analysis of Camille Claudel, this article examines the biopic’s reconstitution in relation to star Adjani’ role, testing notions of historical realism and authenticity in consultation with historical texts.