The Stranger

Luchino Visconti on Camus, not the leopard in Sicily but the lizard in Algiers, equally intransigent to the bitter end. The French clerk Meursault (Marcello Mastroianni) enjoys a null existence in the colonies, small sensual pleasures to cover a vast emptiness. No need to see mother in the coffin, no need to weep at her funeral, "nothing had really changed," there's a Fernandel comedy to catch with his earthy lover (Anna Karina). No zeal for marriage and no ambition for work, no use for "normal emotional reactions." The pimp friend (Georges Géret), the scabby mutt who's a mirror of its aged owner (Joseph Marechal), curiosities under the blistering sun. All builds to the sandy cove with a pistol on a young Arab. "Four shots like four fateful raps on the door of my misery." Alienation and heat, the contemplative and the visceral, inner and outer spaces. The text is followed to the letter, then a bus crosses the screen where a wronged whore's relatives lurk and suffuses the image with smoke that's pure Visconti. A simple case, says the defendant, cause for casual irritation rather than guilt. (The apoplectic magistrate who vainly wields a crucifix has a name for him, "Signor Anticristo.") Panning combined with zooming suits the bluster of the courtroom scenes (Roeg pays tribute in Eureka), where Mastroianni's intelligent effacement of his innate elegance sketches the shabby somnambulist headed for the guillotine. "We're all condemned to die." "But not by execution." A metaphysical construction, subtly monumental, with a kinship to Sternberg's An American Tragedy, another great and disprized adaptation. In the gloom of the prison cell, the half moon of the hollow visage at peace with "the sweet indifference of the universe." Consequences fall to Bertolucci (The Sheltering Sky) and Schepisi (A Cry in the Dark). Cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno. With Bernard Blier, Georges Wilson, Bruno Cremer, Pierre Bertin, and Angela Luce.