The Lady of the Camellias

A tragic story of love, loss, and love again is the 1936 George Cuckor film Camille puts together a group of amazing actors to retell a classic novel. This film has gone on to be one of the most praised love stories, even making Time magazine's list of 100 Best Movies of All Time. If you want to watch this film, you can start here.

The original story is titled "The Lady of the Camellias", referring to the camellia flower the main character always carries. The name Camille was derived from the flower and is what the story is more commonly known as today. The novel was written by Alexandre Dumas, but not the Alexandre Dumas famous for writing The Three Musketeers or The Count of Monte Cristo. The author of Camille is that author's son with his mistress, Parisian dressmaker Marie-Laure-Catherine Labay. The younger Alexander was taken away from his mother at a very young age to live with his father. The story of Camille was partially based on the struggles of Dumas's own mother, but more based on the story of Marie du Plessis, perhaps the most famous French courtesan who ever lived.

The story follows Marguerite Gautier (Greta Garbo) who is born into a poor family but works her way up using her charms to become the Dame Camille. Encouraged by Prudence Duvernoy (Laura Hope Crews), who is the person Camille might become in her old age, Camille is to meet and then seduce the Baron de Varville (Henry Daniell), displacing rival courtesan Olympe (Lenore Ulric). Of course, Camille spies the wrong man and believes the baron is the handsome Armand Duval (Robert Taylor), who she instantly falls in love with her. Camille is kept by the Baron but still loves Armand, who thinks Camille only cares for material possessions. Eventually, Camille leaves the Baron to be with Armand, but Armand's father (Lionel Barrymore) points out to Camille that her reputation will ruin Armand's chance at getting a better life forever. Camille pretends not to love Armand, sending him away. Yet when her consumption begins to grow worse, Camille is convinced that Armand will come back to her.

It is easy how to see that the film Moulin Rouge basically completed ripped off the entire plot of this film, which in turn ripped of the book, but more clever analyses have been made. For more background information on the film itself, you can look at this page from filmsite.org. The Dusted Off blog does this interesting comparison of Camille to modern day Bollywood films.

For more reviews of this film, you can look here at the 1001 Films You Must See Before You Die blogspot. The Classic Film Guide has this review of the film more in the context of the time period. The Garbo Forever fan site has this review of the film as well. And here is one of the original trailers for the film: