Monsieur Klein

Alain Delon is "Mr. Klein," a man profiting off the misfortune of French Jews during World War II in this 1976 film directed by Joseph Losey.

Robert Klein is man buying art work at severely reduced prices from desperate Jews, and for him, it's just business. When he receives a Jewish newspaper addressed to him, however, he becomes concerned, less he be suspected of being Jewish himself. His investigation leads him to another Robert Klein, who lived in reduced circumstances, supposedly resembles him, and whose new address has been given as Klein's own.

This is a fascinating film about how, in the end, we all become victims of prevailing injustice. There is a great deal of symbolism throughout; Delon's Klein becomes obsessed with the other Klein, and their lives become inextricably entangled.

After this film, you'll be left with many questions, for which there are probably several answers. Thus is the beauty of "Mr. Klein," a wonderfully directed and acted film. Delon, as an arrogant and confused man, has rarely been better. He is one actor who, due partially to a nice long life, has been able to extend his range beyond staggering good looks and play interesting, challenging characters; he is a producer of this film.

This is highly recommended and certainly a credit to the filmmaking skills of Joseph Losey as well as the taste and talent of Alain Delon.

Somehow, I got to see only now, 45 years after its release, 'Mr. Klein', Joseph Losey's 1976 film, one of the most interesting movies about the Holocaust and Paris during the Nazi occupation. The film is produced by Alain Delon, who also plays the lead role, one of the best acting creations of his career. It is also one of the last films in the career of Joseph Losey, a remarkable American film and theater director, who spent many decades of his life in Europe, self-exiled because of his communist beliefs. He made several successful films, mostly in England in the 1960s. 'Mr. Klein', made in France, is both significant as one of the first films that addresses lucidly and critically the problematic history of French collaborationism and also fits into the themes and atmosphere of Losey's previous films with heroes who question their identity and the description of ambiguous relationships, often leaving the viewers to decide the meaning of what they see on the screen. I don't think I'm wrong in saying this is Losey's last great movie.

The story takes place in German-occupied Paris in the winter of 1942. Robert Klein (Alain Delon) is an art dealer who leads a comfortable life by taking advantage of the opportunity to buy at low prices paintings from the collections of Jews who were forbidden to practice their professions or trades and who had to sell household objects, including art, in order to survive. The ambiguity of his Alsatian name puts him in an awkward position when he is mistaken for another, Jewish, Robert Klein and begins to receive the newspaper of the Jewish community. Being a Jew in occupied Paris was more than a social stigma, and in trying to clarify the situation, Mr. Klein became entangled in the intricacies of the Petain regime's bureaucracy. The search for his alter-ego becomes a kind of police intrigue in a world that has become absurd according to the criteria of logic and legality that he had known until then. Gradually, he begins to open his eyes to the extent of the discrimination suffered by the Jews and which he had taken advantage of until then nonchalantly. Trying to prove his own 'national purity', Mr Klein starts to get closer the other Robert Klein, who had endangered, intentionally or unintentionally, his easy existence until then. The two Robert Kleins never meet but their destinies are linked.

The quality of Joseph Losey's film-making is remarkable. Paris under occupation, decadent and indifferent, in which part of the population had adopted the slogans, policies and racial legislation of the occupiers and had become complicit in persecutions and deportations denying the democratic principles of France, is brought to the screen with authenticity and carelessness. Attentive as always to detail, Losey creates various interior sets, from the hero's sophisticated apartment or residence in a castle of the probable mistress of the other Robert Klein to his rented, miserable and rat-infested house or the corridors of the police prefectures. The streets are deserted, cold, hostile and if vehicles appear they are police or Gestapo cars. Music plays an important role in two key scenes, one taking place in the castle, the other in a cabaret. The sound of the phones is as threatening as in Hitchcock's movies. Last but not least, the final scene is probably the first on-screen rendition in a feature film of the arrests and deportations of the Paris Jews from the Winter Velodrome, a historical episode kept under silence until then, which many French would have preferred to forget. Alain Delon builds his role between nonchalance and defiance, between trying to ignore realities and assuming them. Among the actors in the cast, I must also mention Jeanne Moreau and Michael Lonsdale, two formidable actors who are cast here in consistent supporting roles. The ending is debatable and was debated, open to many interpretations that have not, I think, been definitively settled by this day. IMDB mentions that Costa-Gavras also contributed to the script, although he is not listed in the credits. 'Mr. Klein' is a must-see film about occupied France and the attitude of the French towards the Holocaust, a film worth seeing, thinking about and discussing.

Joseph Losey's dark moody drama of a man and his double or his shadow takes place in Paris of 1942 during the Nazi Occupation. Mr. Klein, in excellent performance by Alain Delon (if anybody ever tells you that Delon is nothing but a pretty face, NEVER believe it. Delon is a great actor with amazing screen presence who happened to be one of the most beautiful people ever lived), is a French Catholic antique dealer, successful with his business and adored by the ladies. At first, he does not care much about the occupation and the fate of Jews who had to sell their pricey pieces of Art and personal belongings for a song just to be able to leave France and to save their lives. On the contrary, he only becomes richer but everything changes when he is confused with another Robert Klein, his namesake, a wanted by the authorities' member of the underground resistance and a Jew. In the atmosphere of the total fear, bigotry, hatred, and paranoia, the "presumption of innocence" ceases to exist and Mr. Klein must prove that he is not a Jew or to face the fate of millions whose fault was to belong to the "inferior race". While trying to claim his comfortable life back, Mr. Klein begins looking for the man he never met but who by the bitter irony of fate had played such a significant role in his life. The desire to look him in the eye becomes so overwhelming that it will take Robert to where he may not be able to ever come back.

"Mr. Klein" is a complex, subtle, scary, and nightmarish film made by a very talented director who had to leave his country, the USA, in the beginning of the 50s and who knew a thing or two about paranoia and hatred multiplied by the power and turned into indifferent killing machine. Once you are inside this machine, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here". Losey's film is often described as a blend of Hitchcock's thrillers where the heroes must deal with the mistaken identity and Kafka's nightmares of "The Trial" and I agree with the description. I only want to add that the film brings to mind Edgar Poe's short story "William Wilson" which was adapted to the screen by Luis Malle as a part of the trilogy "Histoires extraordinaires" (1968) and Alain Delon played both William Wilson and the mysterious man, his double, his conscience, his dark and hidden side. "Mr. Klein" also reminds another underrated, rarely seen but very interesting Ingmar Bergman's film "The Serpent's Egg" (1977) as well as Bob Fosse's masterpiece "Cabaret". The themes of the Feast during the Time of Plague, the helplessness and distress of the terrorized members of society that face the merciless and inevitable force of history and would perish without a trace, are similar in all three movies. Despite these similarities, "Mr. Klein" is an outstanding film on its own merits. What saddens me is the fact that is little known, rarely seen and almost never mentioned even among the film buffs.

Here with scarce votes and just two dozens reviews, I was jolted by so lowest numbers, Joseph Losey made a beguiling movie surround by mysterious events on Kafkaesque fingerprints all over, the picture takes place in a bleak time at occupied Paris by Nazi-forces in 1942 Mr. Klein (Alain Delon) a thoroughbred bon vivant art dealer who handle as black vulture devouring the distraught Jews that came to him to sell their pieces of art in order to escape to foreign parts, then came up the unexpected, Monsieur Klein now was mistaken by a Jew namesake, henceforth his easy life turns upside down, he tracks down his wrongdoer unflaggingly thru the Paris, receiving strange letter that seemingly goes to nowhere, on his chase an empty room at decaying neighborhood shall be the answer, there he finds some sizeable clues as photo and an odd sheet music, nonetheless the time is running out, the worry Mr. Klein with the police at his neck, he ought proves that his family's roots are France's purebred, rarest picture indeed, approaching the atrocious Holocaust and their havoc at Jewish community on Europe, while in sluggish pace, but never boring, plus letting the eager viewer mesmerized on the screen, the outcome is apotheotic and was enforced by personal reasons, worthwhile the two hours of pure magic!!

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First watch: 2021 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 9

By far the most popular kind of film produced in 70s France was the policier, in which dogged detectives and po-faced policemen plodded through dour crime narratives after charismatic criminals. Generally reactionary, many featured Alain Delon, along with Jean-Paul Belmondo, France's biggest star.

MONSIEUR KLEIN is a very different Delon policier. Set in Occupied Paris, its police are Gestapo stooges doggedly and po-facedly seeking out phoney Frenchmen, with one of whom Klein, Catholic, collaborationist-befriending, art-dealing war-profiteer, seems to be confused, with inevitable consequences.

Losey's nausea-inducing camerawork, his use of ugly colour and shadows which literally swallows up the brightest of film-stars, the recreation of Nazi France, the playing with ideas of play, the combining of exciting thriller with Borges and Kafka, makes this one of the best films of the 70s.