The Stranger

Meursault (Benjamin Voisin) works as a clerk at an office in Algiersduring the French colonial occupation. A modest man who keeps to himself, Meursault finds his routine upended by the sudden death of his mother. At her funeral, he faces scrutiny from all corners for his failure to perform his grief. This reputation for otherworldly detachment follows Meursault back to Algiers, where his tentative romance with Marie (Rebecca Marder) and his indifference to professional advancement frustrate those around him. As Meursault gets swept up in a cycle of escalating reprisals among his neighbors, tensions come to a head when he murders an Arab man on the beach. A Frenchman may offer many defenses for shooting an Arab in Algeria, but Meursault’s refusal of excuse or remorse shakes colonial society to its core. Photographed in sterling, sensuous black-and-white, François Ozon’s new take on Albert Camus’s classic novel of existentialist ennui is a landmark of adaptation, simultaneously faithful to the text and dedicated to discovering fresh perspectives in the margins.

A Legendary Novel

Any man who doesn’t cry at his mother’s funeral is liable to be condemned to death.

This is how Albert Camus, the Nobel laureate in Literature, summarized The Stranger (L’Étranger) when asked to write a preface for the American translation of his celebrated novel.Published by Gallimard, it was an immediate success upon its release in June 1942. Upon reading the manuscript, an impressed André Malraux declared, “Mark my words: this will be a major writer.” Jean Paulhan, an influential editor, wrote in his reader’s report: “This is a first rate novel.”

The book has transcended eras and fascinated generations, becoming a legendary story that has been translated into almost everylanguage and countless dialects. To this day, it remains, alongside “The Little Prince,” one of the three most-read French-language novels in the world. In France, the paperback edition alone has sold nearly ten million copies. More than 200 state and private primary and secondary schools are named after Albert Camus. One of the world’s greatest novels, it has been the subject of numerous adaptations, including a dance performance. Still, there has been only one successful adaptation for the screen: Luchino Visconti’s film, released in October 1967. It was an Italo-French production produced by Dino De Laurentiis, starring Marcello Mastroianni and Anna Karina. During Camus’s lifetime, Ingmar Bergman had expressed a desire to adapt The Stranger, but the project went no further. Referring to his novel, the author wrote: “I only meant that the hero of my book is condemned because he does not play the game. In this respect, he is foreign to the society in which he lives; he wanders, on the fringe, in the suburbs of a private, solitary, sensuallife”. More than 80 years on, it retains all its mystery.