Bruno Nuytten

In his adolescence, Bruno Nuytten played in an amateur theater troupe. His education is varied: training for Art Deco competitions, training for the IDHEC competition, and unfinished training at the Institut national supérieur des arts du spectacle et des techniques de diffusion (INSAS, Belgium, 1967-1969), then obtaining a BTS in "prises de vues" or "shooting" in Paris. He began by being assistant to Ghislain Cloquet (who had been his professor at INSAS), then to Claude Lecomte and to Ricardo Aronovitch. He first worked on short films, then launched himself into the roles of cinematographer and director of photography. He seeks contrasting images, a moving camera, an active relationship with space. By listening to the directors, he learned how to use fixed shots and lighting without contrast when requested by Marguerite Duras (La Femme du Gange (1974), India Song (1975), Son nom de Venise (1976)), or an exaggeratedly expressionist style and a shoulder camera with Andrzej Zulawski (Possession, 1981).

Bruno Nuytten went into directing for Camille Claudel, at the express request of actress Isabelle Adjani, who co-produced the film (with Christian Fechner) and took the leading role. In 2013, she says: “His reason to be, it was the shadow. From the shadow, he made the light exist. He had told me that he would never go into directing. [...] I told him that I would like to use the body of Camille Claudel to be able to personify my own disarray, my cry. He heard me.”[3] A few years earlier, Nuytten had remarked: “The only interesting thing that I discovered while talking with a journalist is that in fact I had put myself in scene in the inversion of powers: at the end of the film I had become Camille Claudel and Isabelle Adjani had become Rodin. And there I am more and more Camille Claudel, even if I am not still in the asylum! One never escapes the delicate, fragile, and human things one touches…”[4]

In 2015, Caroline Champetier, also director of photography, devoted the documentary Nuytten/Film to him.

Bruno Nuytten wrote articles for the technical review Le cinema pratique, animated conferences at the Ciné-club de Melun, and lectures at the Université de Paris III. In Switzerland he founded a production company for advertising films.

Bruno Nuytten was the companion of Isabelle Adjani with whom he had a son, Barnabé, in 1979. Since 1996, he has lived with the director Tatiana Vialle, with whom he has had two children, Tobias and Galathée.

• Bruno Nuytten at IMDb