L'étranger

A naked room, a dead old woman lies on a wooden coffin, across the coffin we see her son. His head down, his face slightly contorted. We move in to notice with a chill that he's just trying to get some dirt from under his fingernails. Mersault. Visconti's Mersault inspired by Camus's Mersault. The film was attacked in its day and the Albert Camus's purists shouted blue murder or worse, they didn't say a word. Visconti knew what he was doing. He chose Marcelo Mastroianni to play Mersault. By that choice alone he was departing from Camus's intentions and yet, if you read the book today and see the film today, Mastroianni is Camus's Mersault. It is the driest of all Visconti films. His toughest. Mastroianni gives a performance that defies description. If you've seen more than once,"XXX" by choice, I don't promise you that you'll surrender, automatically, to the power of this film, but I can assure you that both films belong to the same Universe, yours, ours. Give it a try. Then, you tell me.

Visconti brings to life the Camus novel with the minimum of dialog and surreal visuals.

Algiers sweats. The sun's glare beats down and doesn't let up--right up to the courtroom scene where one watches a dazed Mastroianni in the foreground while the fans of the jury members move in constant motion in a soft-focus background. Much of the film has a dreamlike feel that fuses with the existential blankness felt by Mastroianni's character.

I recall this film playing frequently in San Francisco at the Times Theater back in the early stoner 70's. And with the 70's, this film has all but disappeared. One only hopes that all of Visconti's films will someday make it to DVD--but especially The Stranger!

The tragedy of Lo straniero (The Stranger) is accentuated by the terrific performance of Marcello Mastroianni who looks totally in character of Albert Camus's anti-hero in the popular novel on absurdism, nihilism, and apathy as well as by the linear, straightforward storytelling that is true to the novel and by the haunting score that just helps it conclude itself as a social drama that reflects the sometimes unbiased yet righteous-looking wisdom of the society. TN.

(Watched for free on YouTube.)

Luchino Visconti's sublime adaptation of Camus' "unfilmable" existentialist classic is all but forgotten. It's one of Visconti's best films, a searing, intelligent film. Marcello Mastroianni reportedly stepped into the role of Meurseult, which Visconti had earmarked for his protégé Alain Delon, who would have been too pretty to play the character. Mastroianni gives a masterful performance. As his mistress Maria Cardona, Anna Karina is stunning. She is especially moving in the courtroom scene. Giuseppe Rotunno's cinematography is peerless. Pauline Kael voted this as one of the top three films of 1967, after "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Chimes at Midnight". I hear that the reason why the movie isn't available on DVD or video is because of the rights. Hope this is rectified soon.

About as direct an adaptation from book to movie as you can get, this film version of Camus' famous novel by director Luchino Visconti raises interesting questions about the inherent difference between page and screen.

As much as Camus's first-person prose is included in the film in the form of voice-over, the fact remains that a movie can't get us inside the head of a character like a book can. This is highlighted all the more by the fact that Marcello Mastroianni is outstanding as Camus' Meursault, one couldn't ask for a better performance. Nonetheless, the sense one gets here of understanding (or not) Meursault's perspective pales to that of the novel.

On the other hand, even the most vivid prose cannot transport us to the physical reality of a time and place like a well made film. This version of The Stranger is as much about occupied Algeria in the early twentieth century as it is about Meursault or any of the philosophical questions that Camus was wrestling with in his novel. This version is more overtly political, literally showing the ways in which racism and colonialism shape the interactions of the characters.