Film Review
Few films have been calculated to stir the conscience of the French
with as much vigour and legitimacy as Joseph Losey's bleak existential
masterpiece
Monsieur Klein.
It came along just as France was beginning to wake up to the
unpalatable truths of the Occupation.
Films such as Marcel Ophüls's documentary
Le Chagrin et la pitié
(1969) and a spate of publications had started to demolish the
convenient fiction which had been created by General de Gaulle amid the
founding of the Fourth French Republic. The most shocking
revelation was the extent to which the Vichy government had been
complicit in the deportation of French Jews to the Nazi concentration
camps.
Monsieur Klein
was one of two notable French films made in the mid-1970s - the other
being Michel Mitrani's
Les Guichets du Louvre (1974) -
which dared to depict the most notorious crime of the Vichy regime, the
roundup of 13,000 Jews in Paris on 16th-17th July 1942 by the French
police. Most of the unfortunate victims of what is now referred
to as La Rafle du vel d'hiv (four thousand of whom were children) ended up at the
Winter Velodome, where they were kept for five days in blistering
summer heat without food and virtually no water, before being shipped
off to the death camps. Without doubt, this was one of the most
shameful episodes in French history and one that France would take a
very long time to come to terms with.
When
Monsieur Klein was first
screened in 1976, France was not yet ready to take on board the
terrible truth of La Rafle. Consequently, the film proved to be a
massive commercial failure. The reaction from the critics was far
from encouraging, although some enlightened reviewers recognised the
film's value and were enthusiastic in their praise. Today,
Monsieur Klein is held in far
higher esteem and stands as one of the most important French films of
the 1970s. A dark, fiendishly ambiguous study in
persecution, identity and guilt, it has a distinctly Kafkaesque feel to
it and is sufficiently weird and abstract to admit countless
interpretations, whilst delivering the most harrowing reconstruction of
the July 1942 roundup.
The film represents one of the career highpoints of the acclaimed
auteur director Joseph Losey, a man who knew something about
persecution. A victim of McCarthyism, Losey was placed on the
Hollywood blacklist in the 1950s for alleged involvement with the
Communist Party and was forced into exile in England to resume his
promising filmmaking career. Understandably, one of the recurring
themes in Losey's work is the unwarranted persecution of an outsider
within a closed society, and this achieves its fullest expression in
Monsieur Klein, his most profound
and bleakly lyrical film. This was Losey's first French language
film, although he had previously directed a French production,
Eva (1962), with Jeanne Moreau in
one of her career-defining roles. Moreau, now a major
international star, makes a brief but memorable appearance in
Monsieur Klein.
This was one of about a dozen films that Alain Delon produced with
Raymond Danon, and it was Delon himself who invited Losey to direct the
film after Costa-Gavras withdrew from the project to direct another
Occupation era drama,
Section spéciale
(1975). Losey in turn persuaded Delon to take the lead role, even
though it was a million miles from the kind of role the actor was known
for playing. Losey had previously directed Delon on another
period drama,
The Assassination of
Trotsky (1972). The part of Klein offered Delon
(whose career was then in a state of rapid decline) a welcome break
from the formulaic policiers which the actor was far too closely
associated with in the 1970s. Delon seizes the role and gives
what is arguably his most nuanced and compelling performance, bringing
to his portrayal a similar mix of mystique, ambiguity and vulnerability
that he brought to his previous great role as the lone hit-man in
Jean-Pierre Melville's
Le Samouraï (1967).
Although
Monsieur Klein is
now considered one of Delon's great achievements, when the film was
first released the actor was not judged favourably, most likely because
his role was such a dramatic departure from the screen persona which
audiences had grown used to.
The critical and commercial failure of
Monsieur Klein was a serious double
blow to Delon - not only did he fail to get the critical recognition he
deserved but his production company took a substantial hit, reputedly
losing 300 million francs. Delon felt particularly slighted when
the film failed to garner any awards at the Cannes Film Festival (it
had been nominated for the Palme d'Or), although he was presumably
consoled when it picked up three Césars in 1977 - in the
categories of Best Film, Best Director and Best Set Design. The
latter award went to the acclaimed set designer Alexandre Trauner, a
Hungarian Jew who had famously worked in secret on Marcel
Carné's
Les Enfants du paradis (1945)
during the Occupation. Delon was nominated for the Best Actor
César, but lost out to Michel Galabru in Bertrand Tavernier's
Le Juge et l'assassin (1976).
As in some of his other notable films, Joseph Losey combines various
contrasting styles to give
Monsieur
Klein a distinctive and deeply unsettling ambiance that
perfectly suits its Kafkaesque subject. The restricted colour
palette and subdued lighting, together with some stylistic camerawork
that nods subtly towards classic film noir, create a sustained mood of
oppression and alienation. As the film progresses towards its
grim climax, you can actually feel the world closing in on its
protagonist, cutting off his options as he is drawn ever closer to his
ineluctable fate. We are never sure what Klein's motive is as he
sticks to his dogged pursuit of his unseen adversary, but it soon
becomes apparent that he is like a mouse lost in a maze, or a moth drawn
to a candle - a solitary creature guided by unfathomable instincts
towards destruction, in a cold universe that fails to witness his
arrival or his passing.
The film concludes with a traumatic re-enactment of the herding of the
Jews into the Winter Velodrome. For this sequence, Losey invited
a large number of Jews to work as extras in the crowd
scenes. So authentic was the reconstruction that many of
the people who had agreed to appear in these scenes were too
overwhelmed by their recollections of the actual event to take part in
the film. At the time the film was made, this powerfully moving
sequence would have resonated with a more recent event, namely the use
of the Chile national stadium as a prison and torture camp by the junta
regime following the 1973 coup d'état which ousted President
Salvador Allende.
In spite of Losey's stated intention to present an entirely authentic
recreation of the Occupation, his film is marred by some pretty glaring
historical inaccuracies. The most obvious departure from
historical fact is that the famous roundup took place on a hot July
day, and not, as the film implies, in a cold and miserable
January. It has also been commented that very few of the Jews in
the film are seen wearing the yellow Star of David cloth badge, whereas
in reality all Jews were required to display this badge at all times or
else risk immediate arrest and deportation. The film also
conveniently overlooks the fact that the region of Alsace had been
annexed by Germany in 1940, making it unlikely that the main character
would be able to visit his father in Strasbourg on a whim. It is
also worth noting (and quite revealing) that very few German soldiers
appear in the film.
These apparent inaccuracies can easily be
excused by poetic licence but they become entirely irrelevant if we
accept that the film is not to be taken as a literal account of
events.
Monsieur Klein
makes considerably more sense, and perhaps has greater impact, if we
read it as a dream - a dream in which a man manages to reconcile his
guilt (over his exploitation of Jews, for instance) by burrowing deeper
and deeper into his own psyche. It is a desperate need for
atonement which takes hold of Klein's subconscious mind and sends it
off on what is effectively a guilt trip - to uncover and propitiate the
Other Klein, the better man, with his own sacrifice.
Viewed as a dream experience (or alternatively a subtle allegory)
rather than a historical reconstruction, the film perhaps acquires a
greater significance. It doesn't just make us aware of a shameful
historical event, it also expresses something of the trauma that the
French nation will feel as it comes to term with this fact. Just
how do you react when you learn that your country's esteemed leaders
have been wilful participants in genocide? Klein's experiences
have a distinct resonance with France's search for identity and painful
process of reconciliation after the Liberation. Sadly, when the
film was released in 1976, the country was not yet ready to follow
Monsieur Klein down the path towards Auschwitz. One day,
however, the period of denial did end. The 16th of July is now a
significant date in the French calendar, an acceptance of the injustice
suffered by thousands of French citizens and a lasting reminder of the
part the country played in Hitler's Final Solution.
© James Travers 2011
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Next Joseph Losey film:
Les Routes du sud (1978)