Mr Klein Joseph Losey
What seems at first surprising in Mr. Klein is the pace with which Joseph Losey his story, a rhythm both slow and oppressive, in which the characters find themselves caught in a sort of metaphysical trap, a matrix transparent and yet so physically tangible, which prevents them to glimpse, if only for a moment the absurdity of their destiny and fate of the evil which they succumb. This is one of the finest and most accurate movies I've seen on the tragic history of the Second World War. The beauty of the film, her beauty cold and poisonous if one can say is that it makes a kind of metaphysics and aesthetics of condensation horrible and senseless fate of Jews in this period of history. Instead of simply drawing up causes both social, political and economic factors that have led to the disaster of the persecution and extermination of European Jews, in a way that is both analytical and realistic, Joseph Losey makes a kind of transmutation secret issues, giving them a rare relief, making them witnesses to the absurdity of human destiny in general. The fate of Mr. Klein is not only representative of the history of Jews and their extermination during World War II, it is both the sum and the overflow, including it in the human tragedy in general. The story: Mr. Klein, a rich art dealer living in a luxurious villa uptown Paris, gets a man who just wants to sell a painting. We understand very quickly that he is a Jew, and that because many of ostracism which this category is the object, it can no longer survive by selling the family pictures. Mr. Klein, played with feline grace and worried by Alain Delon, with great confidence of the usurer, also with the recklessness and the arrogance of the man who knows his identity protected against identification to misfortune other, it provides a table for prices well below its real value. The man, resigned, accepting, shot dead but dignified. By dropping off the man at the door, Mr. Klein is a newspaper called The Jewish information. From that moment, the terrible gear is set up. Through surveys and meetings that made Mr. Klein, we discover that another Robert Klein, a Jew who wants to escape the police, combined a sort of conspiracy against the first Klein. Therefore, it is just faced with this question of identity, burning and necessary, as it depends not only on his psychological well-being, but his very life. Doubt on the purity of race creeps into it, while it penetrates, something infinitely more dangerous, in the spirit of the Vichy police. What is striking about the film is that the horror of absolute assimilation of the Jewish community, its identity in this amalgam considered inferior, is not just an abstract thing, say the general theme of the film. The question of identity becomes the subject of the film, making clear that general theme. It is not, as in many historical films, tracing the collective destiny through individual destiny, to make the public understand the great story by showing a few characters who find themselves caught in the snare this story. This is much more than that: the question of identity is the quintessence of the fate of Mr. Klein and the fate of the Jews. By the doubt cast by his double its origins, Mr. Klein is facing a tangible way to the meaning of this question: Are you Jewish. We know that this question of identity has depended on the life and death of millions of people, we know that this question is what has to sort terrible between the living and the dead. Thus, the question of identity, challenge, reason and purpose of the Second World is also the issue of the fate of a character, its hello or its destruction, as it was millions of others into reality. The grandeur and beauty of this film take this essentialization: identity is not only a schematic idea, comprehensive, elusive by its very abstraction, it is the essence of the film and the character.
The genius of Joseph Losey is that it manages to make practical, aesthetic, ideas and intuitions abstract. Thus the idea of fate. In Greek tragedies, which have best figured and represented the idea of fate, it is a battle between gods and men, whose outcome is always known in advance, by the same disproportion between the forces of the two opposing parties. The man rises, he struggles against the forces that surround and play him, he overestimates his own abilities and it is this same blindness that loses. He believes he is the equal of the gods, the master of his fate but he realizes too late that the dice were played in advance. In the film, the idea of inevitability plays not only rhetorically, but also aesthetic. You never see double Mr. Klein, his namesake abstract scheming in the shadows. He has no face, not even a silhouette, its very name indicates that it belongs to the realm of the living, and a voice heard over the phone. It seems that hidden forces rose up against him, so the scenario, which could be just the script for a thriller very well conducted, or a historical film that can be placed only issues in politics and the international context, is also a screenplay metaphysical down against her character's relentless forces of destiny, which, despite its denials, all its debates and its refusal, the nail on the spot. Another factor to this conclusion: Many plans seem in fact the forerunner of what will follow, as clues are thrown into the path of the character, and it can only follow blindly, thinking his problem and which only deeper into the trap. In many scenes, the camera performed before a traveling side, accompanying the character in his wanderings in search of truth, suddenly stops, and seems, by its steadiness even by the cessation or suspension action by the projector that throws light pale in the face of Alain Delon, hunted and pale, even where only blue cats eyes shine with an intense shine, will somehow stop the action, leaving only the fixed and implacable force of fate action. This movement and facial expression of Alain Delon will be repeated at the end of the film, when Mr. Klein pushed by the crowd of deportees and his desire to return to her namesake, finds himself trapped in the train that will take him visibly to death camps. The last scene is the shock precipitated the train, while the camera lingers on the face of a statue of Alain Delon, behind the bars of the cattle train. The character seems to have finally joined the fixity of his destiny, which has ceased to be announced and foreshadowed from the first frame of the film.
What seems at first surprising in Mr. Klein is the pace with which Joseph Losey his story, a rhythm both slow and oppressive, in which the characters find themselves caught in a sort of metaphysical trap, a matrix transparent and yet so physically tangible, which prevents them to glimpse, if only for a moment the absurdity of their destiny and fate of the evil which they succumb. This is one of the finest and most accurate movies I've seen on the tragic history of the Second World War. The beauty of the film, her beauty cold and poisonous if one can say is that it makes a kind of metaphysics and aesthetics of condensation horrible and senseless fate of Jews in this period of history. Instead of simply drawing up causes both social, political and economic factors that have led to the disaster of the persecution and extermination of European Jews, in a way that is both analytical and realistic, Joseph Losey makes a kind of transmutation secret issues, giving them a rare relief, making them witnesses to the absurdity of human destiny in general. The fate of Mr. Klein is not only representative of the history of Jews and their extermination during World War II, it is both the sum and the overflow, including it in the human tragedy in general. The story: Mr. Klein, a rich art dealer living in a luxurious villa uptown Paris, gets a man who just wants to sell a painting. We understand very quickly that he is a Jew, and that because many of ostracism which this category is the object, it can no longer survive by selling the family pictures. Mr. Klein, played with feline grace and worried by Alain Delon, with great confidence of the usurer, also with the recklessness and the arrogance of the man who knows his identity protected against identification to misfortune other, it provides a table for prices well below its real value. The man, resigned, accepting, shot dead but dignified. By dropping off the man at the door, Mr. Klein is a newspaper called The Jewish information. From that moment, the terrible gear is set up. Through surveys and meetings that made Mr. Klein, we discover that another Robert Klein, a Jew who wants to escape the police, combined a sort of conspiracy against the first Klein. Therefore, it is just faced with this question of identity, burning and necessary, as it depends not only on his psychological well-being, but his very life. Doubt on the purity of race creeps into it, while it penetrates, something infinitely more dangerous, in the spirit of the Vichy police. What is striking about the film is that the horror of absolute assimilation of the Jewish community, its identity in this amalgam considered inferior, is not just an abstract thing, say the general theme of the film. The question of identity becomes the subject of the film, making clear that general theme. It is not, as in many historical films, tracing the collective destiny through individual destiny, to make the public understand the great story by showing a few characters who find themselves caught in the snare this story. This is much more than that: the question of identity is the quintessence of the fate of Mr. Klein and the fate of the Jews. By the doubt cast by his double its origins, Mr. Klein is facing a tangible way to the meaning of this question: Are you Jewish. We know that this question of identity has depended on the life and death of millions of people, we know that this question is what has to sort terrible between the living and the dead. Thus, the question of identity, challenge, reason and purpose of the Second World is also the issue of the fate of a character, its hello or its destruction, as it was millions of others into reality. The grandeur and beauty of this film take this essentialization: identity is not only a schematic idea, comprehensive, elusive by its very abstraction, it is the essence of the film and the character.
The genius of Joseph Losey is that it manages to make practical, aesthetic, ideas and intuitions abstract. Thus the idea of fate. In Greek tragedies, which have best figured and represented the idea of fate, it is a battle between gods and men, whose outcome is always known in advance, by the same disproportion between the forces of the two opposing parties. The man rises, he struggles against the forces that surround and play him, he overestimates his own abilities and it is this same blindness that loses. He believes he is the equal of the gods, the master of his fate but he realizes too late that the dice were played in advance. In the film, the idea of inevitability plays not only rhetorically, but also aesthetic. You never see double Mr. Klein, his namesake abstract scheming in the shadows. He has no face, not even a silhouette, its very name indicates that it belongs to the realm of the living, and a voice heard over the phone. It seems that hidden forces rose up against him, so the scenario, which could be just the script for a thriller very well conducted, or a historical film that can be placed only issues in politics and the international context, is also a screenplay metaphysical down against her character's relentless forces of destiny, which, despite its denials, all its debates and its refusal, the nail on the spot. Another factor to this conclusion: Many plans seem in fact the forerunner of what will follow, as clues are thrown into the path of the character, and it can only follow blindly, thinking his problem and which only deeper into the trap. In many scenes, the camera performed before a traveling side, accompanying the character in his wanderings in search of truth, suddenly stops, and seems, by its steadiness even by the cessation or suspension action by the projector that throws light pale in the face of Alain Delon, hunted and pale, even where only blue cats eyes shine with an intense shine, will somehow stop the action, leaving only the fixed and implacable force of fate action. This movement and facial expression of Alain Delon will be repeated at the end of the film, when Mr. Klein pushed by the crowd of deportees and his desire to return to her namesake, finds himself trapped in the train that will take him visibly to death camps. The last scene is the shock precipitated the train, while the camera lingers on the face of a statue of Alain Delon, behind the bars of the cattle train. The character seems to have finally joined the fixity of his destiny, which has ceased to be announced and foreshadowed from the first frame of the film.
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