Albert Camus’s 1942 debut novel, The strangerremains one of the three most read stories in France, along with The WretchedAND The Little Princeat least according to AI. Teenagers are impressed by its brutal simplifications of the absurdity of life, but then don’t re-read it as adults. Thus, it still commands a distinct cultural influence.
Luchino Visconti made a faithful, colorful film of the novel, The strangerin 1967, cast as Marcello Mastroianni’s Meursault, by then in his mid-forties, handsome but charming and inappropriately Italian, in a role that could have been far better played by Alain Delon as originally announced – no less handsome, ten years younger, French and much cooler.
Since then, a film of the novel has been made in Turkey in 2001 (wineOR The fate ) and the story significantly retold in 2013 in a novel called The Meursault investigationby Algerian writer Kamel Daoud. François Ozon decided to adapt The strangerhis 25th film, while trying to make an original film about an alienated youth. He read the book again for the first time in 40 years and was struck by how it resonated with his concerns and how invisible the Arabs were in the novel, before discovering that the rights were again available through Camus’ daughter Catherine.
The film he made, the result of a series of shrewd creative decisions, is much better than Visconti’s. As the novel is narrated in the declarative first person, the obvious temptation is to make extensive use of that most futile form of literary adaptation, voice. Ozone resists this almost entirely, using it only twice, including right after Meursault commits the murder (“I knew I’d upset the balance of the day”), making these intrusions powerful. Otherwise, we observe; we are not told. There are long wordless sequences and to most questions Meursault simply replies that he doesn’t know.
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The cinematography, by Manu Dacosse, is in mesmerizing monochrome, which beautifully conveys the dimness of the Algerian light and takes us historically away from the scene. Ozone reinforces this effect by opening documentary footage of Algiers in the 1930s. Due to tensions between France and Algeria, filming there was impractical; Tangier had to be used as a base, but it works great. The soundtrack, by Kuwaiti composer Fatima Al Qadiri, also bridges the ages, combining traditional Arabic elements with electronica.
The casting is great. Meursault will always be a problem: he is not just unsympathetic, but unreadable, a blank page. To keep us enthralled, he must be extremely attractive. Benjamin Voisin (star of the movie Ozon 2020 Summer of 85) is still in his twenties and looks so irresistible that we follow him non-stop, no matter how wild his demeanor. As Marie, the girl he picks up on the beach the day after his mother’s funeral, Rebecca Marder is also luminous, her love for him far more evident than in the novel. Around this couple, some glorious actors of despicable French characters have also gathered – Pierre Lottin as the fatally evil Raymond Sintès, Denis Lavant as the crazy owner of Salamano’s dog, Swann Arlaud (the compromised lawyer in Anatomy of a Fall ) as the priest Meursault rejects in prison.
So far, so true to the source. Where Ozon has resolutely corrected or, as he prefers to put it, contextualized, or as we might better say, updated, Camus is in his callous treatment of Algerian women and Arabs in the story. Marie’s role is enhanced, as is that of the sister of the man who is killed; she is given the name Xamila and appears (anachronistically) in court scenes.
Camus’ position on Algerian independence was controversial during his lifetime, let alone today: “an incompetent colonial sensibility” (Edward Said). He did not speak Arabic, and no Arabs ever do in his fiction, as Conor Cruise O’Brien pointed out. He had no time for religion. He never accepted Algerian independence, claiming that Muslims “were making crazy demands for an independent Algerian government, where the French will be considered foreigners unless they convert to Islam.”
Ozon counters these dismissive opinions by carefully placing the story in its colonial context and implying that it foreshadows the conflict to come. Camus has always denied precisely this. So here’s an achievement Foreignerfor today, the story we wish he had written, instead of the one he himself claimed to have.
“The Stranger” opens in theaters on April 10
(Further reading: Jim Jarmusch and the parental satisfaction principle)
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