After making a few films at RKO in the late 1940s and early 50s, American-born director Joseph Losey (1909-84) was blacklisted during the grim Red Scare days of McCarthyism. He directed a handful of pictures under different names, but ultimately moved to the United Kingdom. "Eva" (1962), an erotically charged movie starring Jeanne Moreau, marked his official comeback. His subsequent output varied in quality, but included such well-regarded films as the "The Servant" (1963), "Accident" (1967), "The Go-Between" (1971), "A Doll's House" (1973) and the stunning French language "Mr. Klein" (1976), now available in a newly restored print on DVD.
The first scenes are of a doctor examining a woman to see if she has "Semitic" features that would label her Jewish. The "examination" is impersonal. Her humiliation at standing nude while the doctor dictates his findings to a nurse is painful to watch. It's Paris in 1942. The City of Light has lost its luminosity under the Nazi occupation.
Viewers then meet the elegant Robert Klein (Alain Delon), an impeccably attired art-and-antiques dealer living in a beautifully decorated home in a tony area of Paris. Many of his clients are Jews who are forced to sell their treasures to raise money to escape. He offers them rock-bottom prices. When they protest his taking such blatant advantage of their desperate situation, he shrugs, says life is tough, and tells them they can sell to someone else, knowing full well they aren't likely to find another buyer. He has a mistress (Francine Berge) who sexually services him but to whom he is otherwise indifferent.
One morning he finds a Jewish newspaper outside his front door. He is confused. He's not Jewish. He's Roman Catholic. He visits the publisher to find out why it was delivered to him, but learns that their mailing list has been confiscated by the German authorities. Mr. Klein visits those authorities, who are suspicious of his protestations. He sets out to find the other Robert Klein, the one with whom he has been confused.
This other Mr. Klein seems to be a Jewish Resistance fighter. He appears to live in a filthy, vermin-infested apartment in a grim section of Paris. His unstable concierge (Suzanne Flon) is vague about how often he stays there and resists showing the apartment, which is now vacant. Delon's Mr. Klein rents it in hope of learning something. This leads him to visit a fabulously wealthy woman (Jeanne Moreau) who may be Jewish and who may be the former mistress of the other Mr. Klein. She casually dismisses him as "a snake in hibernation," presumably waiting for better weather. When asked for his address, she gives the real Mr. Klein's residence.
His friends think he is mad to obsess about this issue, which is clearly an error, but he senses trouble. He asks his lawyer to get copies of the birth certificates of his grandparents to prove they were Gentiles. If even one had been Jewish, the Nazis would have labeled him a Jew, regardless of how he had been reared.
Mr. Klein is forced to sell his valuable paintings and antiques to raise money to leave Paris. His attorney buys these things, at well below market value. Mr. Klein, carrying substantial funds in gold, boards a train that will take him to safety. But he remains outraged that he is being mistreated. It's all a bizarre, frightening mistake. He shows little if any compassion for others whom the Nazis are sending off to concentration camps. Nor does he ask for sympathy for himself. Rather, he demands justice.
Mr. Klein clings to the belief that if he can prove to the Nazis that they are wrong about him, that he is not a Jew, they will relent. That certainty drives his actions. The suspense mounts as he encounters one rebuff after another, each one putting him at greater risk. Yet heedless of warnings, he continues to seek someone in an official capacity who will administer justice.
At 41, Delon was no longer the blindingly beautiful youth of "Purple Noon" (1959), "Rocco and His Brothers" (1960), "The Leopard" (1963), "Le Samouri" (1967) and other pictures of the 60s, but was still handsome and trim. He gives a remarkable performance. His confusion and bewilderment turn to desperate anger as his world falls apart. Yet he remains emotionally distant. His situation evokes sympathy, even though he does not. Viewers are more likely to feel pity and compassion for the others whom the Nazis are preparing for death. It is hard to imagine another actor playing the part so effectively. Moreau, in her cameo, is splendid, as is the rest of the large cast.
Losey's direction is powerful yet unobtrusive. He uses Paris locations that are often sinister and far from recognizable. He superbly shows the indifference of so many of the French to what was happening around them. Restaurants and clubs are full of Parisians enjoying themselves. They laugh at a puppet show targeting Jews.
Franco Morandi and Franco Solinas (with an uncredited assist from Costa-Garvas) wrote the groundbreaking screenplay, one of the earliest examinations of French anti-Semitism and collaboration with the Nazis during WWII. Delon was one of the movie's producers — without his participation, the film would not have been made. In French with English subtitles.