Facing the cold truth with Mr Klein
Why a French movie about World War II was a box office bust
Following the rampant rise of antisemitism on X/Twitter, Elon Musk defended his inaction saying that he is “aspirationally Jewish” because he has some Jewish friends and has been to Israel a couple of times. He is not alone in cosplaying Judaism, think about George Santos earlier.
In living memory in Europe, being Jewish was very dangerous. I recently saw the movie Mr Klein (1976) directed by Joseph Losey, starring Alain Delon. Many spoilers to follow.
In the movie, an older (about 40-year-old) Alain Delon, established male sex symbol of French cinema, plays the ruthless Robert Klein. Klein is an art dealer, who lives in Paris in 1942. It’s the middle of World War II, but Klein’s life is going pretty well. He is making fantastic deals. He buys great artworks from Jewish people in desperate situations, for very low prices. In an early scene, the seller of a priceless painting is shocked Mr Klein is offering so little. This is a family heirloom he sells because he needs the money. Mr Klein replies he’s not obliged to buy and that his prospective seller is free to sell the painting elsewhere. But the seller has no choice.
Moments later, a Jewish newspaper lands on Klein’s doorstep. He asks whether it’s the seller’s. The seller says no, and shows his own copy. The newspaper is addressed to Mr Robert Klein.
Thus begins a quest by Mr Klein to find his elusive Jewish doppelgänger. He becomes obsessed. At first, you think it's a North by Northwest situation but as the viewer you quickly realize it is not that kind of film. Being mistaken for a Jewish person turns out to be a disaster for Klein. He goes and sees family who assure him he has four French Catholic grandparents, in spite of his German-sounding name. Having four non-Jewish grandparents was a requirement to not be considered Jewish. But how to prove it? His friend tries to find the paperwork.
His desperate search to clear himself sets in motion a police investigation that ends end up with both Mr Kleins being arrested and rounded up. Klein still tries to follow the other Robert Klein as he disappears from view en route to the trains. His friend waves the certificates showing that he is not Jewish, four grandparents to prove it, but Klein disregards it and moves on, utterly compelled to finally meet his double face to face. Meanwhile, as the movie ends, we hear the dialogue at the beginning of the movie where Klein buys the artwork for scraps. Is Robert Klein driven by guilt? Or is he driven by an irresistible urge to clear up the mystery? This is left ambiguous. Regardless, the movie shows that if you participate in a violent, oppressive regime, there's no guarantee it won't crush you too.
Alain Delon, as the main producer, invested significantly in this cold, austerely directed and acted Brechtian movie. Unfortunately, the movie fared poorly at the box office. In 1976, the French audience was not ready to face the cold reality that the Vichy Regime not only actively collaborated with the Germans in the Holocaust, but even went out of their way to organize it themselves with their police force. With zeal, they orchestrated a huge roundup of Jews in Paris of tens of thousands of people. For instance, the Germans instructed them that children under sixteen would be exempt, but the French insisted to round up children anyway, for “humanitarian” reasons. Four thousand children were among those arrested and murdered.
Even in 1976, the French people were not prepared to acknowledge their complicity in these horrors. Mr Klein, which tells the story of the roundup through a unique angle, was not what they wanted to hear. Lest we think that denialism is a new phenomenon, it's always been hard for us collectively to face the cold truth, of horrors we've collectively enabled, or that are part of reality of people we knew closely such as parents and grandparents. It was only in 1995 (!) that then-president Jacques Chirac publicly apologized for France's complicity.
Great movie. Credit to all team