Albert Camus: The Madness of Sincerity — 1997 Documentary Revisits the Philosopher’s Life & Work

Open­ing with a child­hood sto­ry from his life, the doc­u­men­tary above, Albert Camus: The Mad­ness of Sin­cer­i­ty, tells us that the philosopher/journalist/novelist’s first love was “the howl­ing and the tumult of the wind.” It’s a beau­ti­ful image for a writer who con­front­ed the pain, joy, and con­fu­sion of human exis­tence with­out the ready-made props of reli­gious belief, nation­al­ist alle­giance, or ide­o­log­i­cal con­for­mi­ty. Camus’ “mad­ness of sin­cer­i­ty” pro­duced endur­ing work like The Stranger, The Plague, The Rebel, The First Man, and The Fall and won him a Nobel Prize in 1957.

His con­vic­tion also cost him friend­ships as he turned away from mass move­ments and pur­sued his own path. It was a cost he was pre­pared to bear. As he would write in The Fall in 1956, “How could sin­cer­i­ty be a con­di­tion of friend­ship? A lik­ing for the truth at all costs is a pas­sion that spares noth­ing and that noth­ing can with­stand.”

After the wind, of course, Camus had many more loves, and many lovers. A few of them appear above, along with Camus’ daugh­ter Cather­ine and son Jean to dis­cuss the great themes of his work in three chap­ters: the Absurd, Revolt, and Hap­pi­ness. With dis­cus­sion and excerpts—read by nar­ra­tor Bri­an Cox—from Camus’ work, the doc­u­men­tary traces his life from birth and a dif­fi­cult child­hood in French Alge­ria, to his dai­ly edi­to­ri­als for Com­bat dur­ing the French Resis­tance, his turn against Com­mu­nism and deci­sion to live in near-exile in the ‘50s, and his pre­ma­ture death in a car acci­dent in 1960 at the age of 47. All in all, the doc­u­men­tary leaves us with the impres­sion of Camus as a mag­net­ic indi­vid­ual, and a deeply prin­ci­pled one, who held true to the words quot­ed from his Nobel accep­tance speech ear­ly in the film about the writer’s task, which is always, he said, “root­ed in two com­mit­ments… the refusal to lie about what one knows, and resis­tance to oppres­sion.”

Find more thought-pro­vok­ing films in our col­lec­tion, 285 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Albert Camus Deliv­er His Nobel Prize Accep­tance Speech (1957)

Albert Camus Wins the Nobel Prize & Sends a Let­ter of Grat­i­tude to His Ele­men­tary School Teacher (1957)

Albert Camus Writes a Friend­ly Let­ter to Jean-Paul Sartre Before Their Per­son­al and Philo­soph­i­cal Rift

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness