“Today mom died. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.”
With those phrases, the author Albert Camus, born in French Algeria, represented one of the vital known and remembered beginnings of literature, giving existence to The Stranger. The luck of this novel used to be felt by way of the Galimar publishing space after its first e-newsletter in 1942, promoting 360,000 copies. These days, it’s nonetheless a few of the 3 best-selling paperbacks in France and has been translated into greater than 40 languages. In Spanish, the latest model is the only made in 2025 by way of María Teresa Gallego Urrutia and Amaya García Gallego for Random Area.
Because the French literary skilled Alice Kaplan recollects in her guide Enquete de l’Etranger, the fascination led to by way of this novel is in response to the complexity of more than one reasoning that strikes from colonial allegory and philosophy of the absurd to the wondering of conventional morality, non-public disconnection or capital punishment.
Aside from its plain literary worth, its cultural resonance and relevance ended in a movie adaptation by way of one of the vital acclaimed French filmmakers of the twenty first century: François Ozon. It’s the second one primary display adaptation of a singular whose technical complexity lies within the very essence of the narrative: methods to translate the subjectivity inherent within the interior monologue of a personality characterised by way of indifference to cinema?
Trailer for the brand new model of The Stranger. Footage and voice over
Within the 1967 adaptation, directed by way of Luchino Visconti and starring Marcello Mastroianni, the foremost voice expressed the protagonist’s introspection. Ozon, on the other hand, opts for a minimalist atmosphere marked by way of silence and classical song to emphasise the nature’s emotional neutrality.
Thus, he makes use of the narrative theory of “show, don’t tell” to exchange verbal psychology with a visible one who expresses the indifference of the protagonist, Meursault, and the social response to it. On the identical time, it reinforces the bare gaze of the observer, which purposes as a metaphor for the philosophy of the absurd. Meursault’s apathy finds a profound mirrored image at the ontological vacancy of the human situation within the face of a global devoid of which means. That is in particular attention-grabbing since the portray exposes the viewer to the nature’s personal vacancy. Then there’s the hybrid language between literature and cinema that awakens a voice within the minds of the target market.
The cultured selection of black and white within the movie could also be attention-grabbing, for the reason that it privileges the ambivalence between mild and shadow, mild and darkness, warmth and chilly. Sensations thus change into the motive force of the audiovisual narrative.
Likewise, the chromatic choice emphasizes the movie’s sense of timelessness and transports us, consistent with the filmmaker himself, to the archival photographs we’ve of French Algeria, responding to his belonging within the collective creativeness. If truth be told, there’s a prelude to Algeria within the Thirties within the movie that contextualizes France’s colonial previous in that house the place two communities coexisted—French and Arab—with out in reality residing in combination. Ozon himself recollects this when he explains the loss of interplay between them, emphasizing Camus’s aware belief of those tensions.
Flashback continuo
The point of view of the filmmaker could also be vital. Some distance from reproducing the literary chronology, he raises the curtain of the play with Benjamin Voisin, the actor taking part in Meursault, pointing out within the collective cellular: “I have killed an Arab. The gaze of a group of inmates, clearly all Arab, is focused on him, silence reigns, and night falls.”
The dream represents a symbolic construction that visually interprets the flashback of the internal tale. The dream-like environment is enhanced by way of two intertextual references that seem in successive frames. First, a rat walks round a cellular with the signal of Plague, every other of the novels that earned Camus the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. Then, Meursault sees a cockroach when he appears at his hand, which represents every other directorial license that, past the repulsive symbology of this socially despised insect, inspires the symbolism of the caconfec. excellence: the insect by which Gregory Samsa transforms into Metamorphosis. Each allusions emphasize dehumanization, otherness, alienation and absurdity.
Symbol from The Stranger, tailored by way of François Ozon. BTeam Footage The Position of Indigenous Other folks
Any other cinematic license is the nominalization of Arab characters who articulate the tale. The murdered Arab and his sister are known as Musa Hamdani, i.e. Deimila. Those are names filled with which means, for the reason that Musa is the Arabic type of Moses – the prophet of exile – and Djemila inspires Djamila Bouhired, an activist of the Nationwide Liberation Entrance and a cult determine of the Algerian resistance.
Ozone additionally supplies a patronymic for those two characters, thus signifying their belonging to a culturally recognizable lineage. This emphasizes the human size of those indigenous peoples, excluded from attention by way of French electorate beneath the Decree of the Cremier (1870). Additionally, it is a part of the cultural and political mirrored image that arose out of postcolonial complaint. The title Djemila additionally inspires literary intertextuality, for the reason that the second one tale of The Wedding ceremony, Camus’ first version, takes position within the historical Roman town of the similar title.
Briefly, it’s an adaptation that sublimates Camus’s philosophical and aesthetic sensibilities within the portray, whilst introducing a important studying this is in discussion with fresh interpretations. Ozon thus takes at the problem of moving to audiovisual language a singular that already exists within the creativeness of hundreds of thousands of readers so as to underline the validity of a textual content this is within the intimate and on a regular basis, within the deep tensions of private dynamics and that questions social norms.
