Camille Claudel, sculpter pour exister

The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch is the author of a powerful body of work that is rooted in symbolism and expressionism. His most famous painting, "The Scream", painted in 1893, has become the symbol of existential anguish. He obsessively sought to express his most violent emotions in the face of death and love, bringing them together in a great whole, the "Frieze of Life". Nature, in perpetual movement, the bearer of vital momentum, helped him to exalt his anguish of living through its colors and undulating lines.

He inhabits the world just like he inhabits his house: motionless. A serious accident nailed him there: in a house in the middle of a large garden. No longer can he dash around the world: day after day, he contemplates it from his house. He’s a filmmaker. He’s only ever lived to make movies.

Every Tuesday, Mallarmé received guests, and people flocked to his house to hear him. Renoir, Gide, Claudel, Henri de Régnier, Barrès, Debussy and Valéry were among those who listened to these evenings. In their diaries or correspondence, the American poet Sadakitchi Hartman, Mallarmé's son-in-law Edmond Bonniot, and the French poet Jean de Tinan evoke the Master, standing in front of the tiled stove, recounting repartees, aphorisms, judgements, anecdotes, sentences and memories. A documentary mixing photos, objects, drawings, engravings and real shots attempts to restore the place, the small dining room, its furniture, and the ritual of the evenings with the chairs that are brought in, the punch that is offered, the tobacco that is smoked. Jean-Paul Fargier once again brings together these prestigious listeners in the setting he has reconstructed.