Monsieur Klein

As a tourist you may have had brekker at the Café de Flore. The service was abominable, l’addition astronomic but on holiday it’s worth it to sit in the sun, read a newspaper and watch people. Inevitably, then you will walk down the Rue du Bac towards the Seine.

There are plenty of antique shops for window-shopping and when you reach the river you may turn left, à gauche as they say, to pop into the Musée d’Orsay, or continue across the Pont Royal for a walk in the Jardin des Tuileries or more probably turn right for a long lunch at Le Voltaire; such an institution that it doesn’t have a website. In the Rue du Bac you will have passed the site of the Hôtel Dillon and Whistler’s home at the end of the 19th century. Another, fictional, resident is Monsieur Klein, subject of Joseph Losey’s 1976 eponymous film.

Joseph Losey is a director impossible to categorise; as great an auteur as Stanley Kubrick. Losey’s finest films, or at least the best I have seen, are The Damned, The Servant, King & Country, Modesty Blaise, The Accident, The Go-Between and Don Giovanni. Different genres, to be sure, but all worth re-watching. I often think he directed Death in Venice but he didn’t.

Monsieur Klein is on YouTube; I’ve never seen it so I’m going to pour a drink and watch it. If I  may digress, I don’t always get to choose our evening film/TV programme. Robert chose Dunkirk and, rather sensibly, I became insensible. When we watched the second half I knew I was right. Meanwhile here is the trailer , or the bande-annonce as it’s called in the Rue du Bac.

4 comments

  1. DUNKIRK is a ludicrous movie as it’s supposed to take place ‘in real time’ – as emphasized by the fact that Tom Hardy takes off in his plane at the beginning & lands, having run out of juice, at the end. Early on there are about a million soldiers on the beach & by the end they’ve almost all been taken off, suggesting that the entire operation, which in fact took place over 10 days, was accomplished in a few hours.

    I didn’t know about MONSIEUR KLEIN – thank you, Christopher, for telling us about it, I’ll watch it tonight.

    1. Far be it from me… But it takes place in three different time realities: in the air, roughly the actual length of the film; at sea – a couple of days; on the ground, a couple of weeks. The first time I was utterly confused by what was going on, but reading an interview with the director later, I understood the structure and went to see it again. Then I found it a powerful device for understanding what was going on and found the film much more interesting. It might have been helpful to have this explained in the opening of the film though!

      I took a friend to see it (third time of viewing for me) and after 30 minutes she said “We have to leave, I can’t stand the violence. ” I pointed out that there had not really been any: she said “It’s the threat of violence, its very alarming”. We left.

      1. Multiple time schemes are a minor obsession of mine; recently I have mentioned Othello and the Patrick O’Brian novels. The problem with Dunkirk is that it’s not a good film; much too mawkish.

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