Every day, AlloCiné recommends a film to (re)watch on TV. Tonight: the César for Best French Film of 1977.
In search of a subject on the Occupation, Franco Solinas and Costa-Gavras are inspired by the testimony of Marius Klein in the documentary Le Chagrin et la Pitié. This Clermont trader says there that, during the Second World War, he wrote an advertisement in a local newspaper to let it be known that his name was not Jewish and that he was of the Catholic faith.
They thus end up with the scenario of Monsieur Klein, whose eponymous hero decides to trace the trail of the Jewish homonym who uses his name. Costa-Gavras wants to shoot it with Jean-Paul Belmondo. But a conflict between producers and an injury to the actor push Costa-Gavras to withdraw from the project.
Alain Delon then showed his interest in the film. Alongside Raymond Danon, with whom he co-produced Le Gitan in 1974, the actor is involved as a producer. It was he who convinced the American director Joseph Losey, then blacklisted in the United States because of his membership in the Communist Party, to direct it. The two men are collaborating for the second time in their career, after having already worked together on The Assassination of Trotsky in 1972.
With Monsieur Klein, Joseph Losey signs an ambitious work; Kafkaesque reflection on the theme of identity and the double. Despite his remarkable performance, Alain Delon won neither the César for Best Actor nor the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival, for which he was nominated. In theaters, the feature film only attracts 700,000 French people – a score far from its previous films (Zorro, Cop Story or Le Gitan) which all exceeded one million admissions. The opportunity, therefore, to give him a new chance this evening on C8 in order to (re) discover him in one of his best roles.
Monsieur Klein by Joseph Losey with Alain Delon, Jeanne Moreau, Michael Lonsdale…
From 10 years old
Tonight on C8 at 9:10 p.m.