Lo straniero directed by Luchino Visconti (Italy, 1967)
L’Étranger directed by François Ozon (France, 2025)
These two films are seperated by almost half a century but are otherwise quite similar in mood. The source for both is of course Albert Camus’s 1952 novel which in English is generally translated as ‘The Outsider’. This is a kind of ur-text for existentialism.
In the afterward to the novel, Camus wrote of his Algerian anti-hero Meursault: “One wouldn’t be far wrong in seeing ‘The Outsider as a story of a man who, without any heroic pretentions, agrees to die for the truth.”
This is a neat sound bite but ignores the not irrelevant detail that this is also a man who killed an Arab man for reasons that are never entirely clear. Being blinded by the sun is his lame defence in the courtroom. Such a state of confusion might have accounted for one shot after being threatened with a knife but doesn’t explain why he then fired four more bullets into the lifeless body.
The Arab is basically a clunky plot device with racist implications. Camus doesn’t even bother to give readers the dead man’s name. The man’s anonimity is carried through to Visconti’s film but is partially corrected in Ozon’s version which ends with an image of the victim’s gravestone. In both films the focus is squarely on Meursault depicting him as a suave, elegant man of few words. Marcello Mastroianni has such a natural charm that it’s hard to think too badly of him. Benjamin Voisin conveys to cold-hearted detachment more convincingly.
Both directors are at great pains to remain faithful to the novel; too much so in my view. Visconti uses a voiceover throughout which tends to detract from the visuals. Images can and should have been enough. Quoting Camus’s lines verbatum comes across like a talking book in parts. Ozon isn’t so guilty of this and his film is also far superior because of the breathtaking black and white photography by Manu Dacosse.
I understand why directors resort to voiceovers when adapting ‘difficult’ novels but that doesn’t make it a correct choice. Alone in his cell awaiting the executioner Meursault muses “I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.” How can you render such a thought in a movie? The short answer is that you can’t. I suppose you could have him say this line to a fellow prisoner or they could have been his final words before the guillotine falls. But either would strike a false note. Some lines are destined to remain as a voice in the head
In this case, the indifference of the outsider has to be rendered by other means. Both Mastroianni and Voisin make valiant attempts to convey the necessary detachment. For instance, when they each say “I killed an Arab” with such a lack of gravitas that they might have simply been saying “I trod on a dung beetle”.
In his YouTube review of Ozon’s film , Mark Kermode states that “existential despair is essentially infantile” by which he implies that what seems profound and subversive to a teenager is little more than an attempt to seem complex and anti-conformist. This attitude comes with a soundtrack. Writers like Kafka, Camus, Dostoevsky, Sartre and Hesse have provided plenty of material to post-punk bands like The Cure and Joy Division. “Here are the young men, the weight on their shoulders” bemoaned Ian Curtis in ‘Decades’ and Robert Smith tapped into his inner Camus when he sang “I can turn and walk away, or I can fire the gun/ Staring at the sky, staring at the sun /Whichever I choose, it amounts to the same/Absolutely nothing” in The Cure’s ‘Killing An Arab’, a song that plays over the closing credits to Ozon’s film.
I agree that existentialism can be used to justify apathy but I don’t personally think that this makes it juvenile. Rejecting God is a mature and rational standpoint. The challenge is that this leads naturally to the sobering recognition that this life is all we have. Meursault’s indifference and lack of morality makes him a bad role model. His words and actions have fatal consequences because he displays a lack of kindness and empathy.
All this philosophical complexity is hard to turn into an on screen entertainment package. Visconti and Ozon make brave attempts to put visuals to Camus’s treatise but ultimately the novel is all you need.
