Monsieur Klein (1976)
Directed by Joseph Losey

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.

Film Synopsis

Paris, January 1942.  Robert Klein is an art dealer who has grown rich by trading in valuable art treasures sold by Jews who are desperate to raise cash to escape deportation to Nazi Germany.  Klein has no scruples about what he does.  He believes he is making an honest living, providing a service to people for whom he has no deep feelings.  Then, one day, Klein is shaken out of his ambivalence when, on his doormat, he finds a Jewish pamphlet addressed to him.  Intrigued, Klein immediately embarks on his own investigation to uncover the identity of the man who shares his name.  As he does so, he arouses the suspicion of the police and must obtain documents to prove that he himself is not a Jew.  Convinced that someone is using his own identity as a cover, perhaps to evade deportation, Klein is driven to find out all he can about his mysterious namesake.  So determined is the art dealer to discover the truth that he fails to realise the risk he is running.  His quest is destined to end in disaster, one dark and terrible day in 1942...