ABSTRACT
Considerations of Natacha Rambova’s role in the production, design and direction of films are often overshadowed by studies which tend to prioritize her male professional counterparts. A conspicuously gifted draftswoman herself, the highly decorative and abstract style of the Art Deco fashion plate is everywhere present in the bold contrasts and clean lines of Camille. In more than one instance Rambova appears to have deliberately resurrected particular visual strategies in order to stage a specifically ‘decorative’ and emphatically feminine modern aesthetic. Fundamentally ornamental in intent and flaunting an abundance of decorative motifs and materials, it is perhaps no coincidence that the logic of the arabesque seems to be built right into the film’s script, which ends with the same imperative that announces its beginning. In the fall of 1923, Rambova and her husband Rudolph Valentino posed for a publicity photo leaning against a large decorative screen by the American modernist Florine Stettheimer.
