West Germany
, 107 min
Shown in 1981
CREDITS
- dir
-
Percy Aldon
- scr
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Percy Aldon
- cam
-
Jurgen Martin
- cast
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Eva Mattes, Jurgen Arndt, Norbert Wartha, Wolf Euba
A discovery. For his first feature film, Percy Adlon, a notable writer and director of German television, describes the last few months in the life of Marcel Proust, as told by his housekeeper-nurse, Celeste Albaret. At the time (1922), Celeste was a simple country girl of 20; Proust was 50 and—secluded in his apartment, seriously ill from asthma—he completed his literary masterwork, Remembrance of Things Past. For nine years, Celeste had remained with the writer as an alter-ego; enduring his whims, she assisted him in the dictation of the final passages of the great book that consumed Proust’s life. Celeste is a brilliantly artistic film in which the dramatic juxtaposition of the two major characters is vividly brought to life. Celeste lived to write her own biography when she was in her 80s and now resides in a suburb of Paris. Celeste’s memories and experiences are merged into an engrossing observation of her daily routine, waiting for a ring from Proust’s bedroom. Each visit was like an addition to the dwindling energy he gave to his book, and Celeste delighted in the stories he told her, or fearfully tried to go along with his feeble efforts to go out again to explore nocturnal Paris. Eva Mattes is exemplary in the title role, bringing an earthly wisdom to Celeste’s personality that adds stature to Jurgen Arndt’s indelible portrayal of the ailing genius. These two people, almost imprisoned together at 44 Rue Hamelin, shared the shaping of timeless literature, and Adlon’s film is a treasured homage to Celeste. Before Proust’s “Dark Woman” of death finally came through the door to claim him, it was Celeste who reclaimed his immortality.
—Albert Johnson
FACTOID #95
Later to find fame with the amnesia-tinged film noir update Memento, British director Christopher Nolan was nominated for the SKYY Prize in 1998 for his first feature Following. Nolan shot the film about a writer who stalks strangers, on weekends over the course of a year on a budget of $6,000.
