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CLAUDE MONET STOOD on a path that ran through his gardens in Giverny. He had set his easel up near the edge of the water to be filmed, painting. On his left arm, he held the palette, into which three brushes were inserted, angled out. A fourth brush was in his right hand. The right edge of the painting had lines cascading down it like the tresses of the willow nearby, lines reflected in the shadowy depths of the water. As the camera operator ran his machine, Monet turned right and looked in the direction of the willow. He looked over often, quickly and repetitively, daubed with his brush, then looked again.
It was 1915. His gardens, after more than thirty years of work, were in their glory. The curve of his green-painted Japanese bridge was doubled in the beautifully irregular waters with their lilies; the irises reached up and the willow branches trailed down. He had been painting the gardens, painting in these gardens, for a large part of his long life. Even before Giverny, he had built gardens wherever he and his family could afford to perch. To an interviewer, he would later say, "More than anything, I must have flowers, always, always."
He would not leave the gardens now. War had come again. When Monet was at work in those years, he would hear the sound of shells from the front and the ambulances at the end of his road. His son Michel and his stepson Jean-Pierre were in the army, and his fear was terrible.
Monet had agreed to be in the film knowing it was part of the war effort: the director, Sacha Guitry, wanted to show the peace and integrity of French artists, performers, and intellectuals amid the war. The film would eventually be called Ceux de chez nous (Those of Our Home, or Those of Our Land, or Those of Ours). In it, Monet would be one of the first painters to be filmed at work. And if he felt somewhat self-conscious performing the act of painting for the camera, there was something to be said for the fact that it would still be his stroke of the brush, his turning to look repeatedly...