Verbatim rerun of Camus's study of motiveless murder. Quite competent (except for the lamentable fight scene) but on the whole adding no artistry of its own, and with its lengthy courtroom scenes, rather dull. Mastroianni is also utterly wrong for the part. What really interested me here is what attracted Visconti to the project, which bolsters my suspicion that this is one of most misunderstood novels of the twentieth century, along with Kafka's The Trial. Let's see: life as meaningless and absurd, somewhat angst-ridden, nibbling away at society's mores, an ambivalent attitude towards women. Hmm.
Consider that the eponymous Stranger may well be the Arab, not Meursault - a significant shift of focus that doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone. Certainly Meursault is hardly an outsider, as the translated title claims. His only fault is a certain impassivity - the word is repeated at key moments - it is really his impassivity that condemns him. But why has he become emotionally impotent? Consider that Meursault is compelled back along the beach towards the Arab accompanied by melodramatic dazzling sunlight and dizziness. That the murdered man is an Arab only aligns this scene with a certain age-old North African cliché that Wilde, Gide and Bowles knew all about. In any case we can't assume it is meaningless. The dizziness is his disorienting attraction to the Arab that drives him to distraction. The five shots could stand for a different kind of shot - consider that we only have Meursault's word for what happened, and evidently whatever did happen cannot speak its name (another age-old cliché). Writ larger, the murder itself is a metaphor for his visceral rejection of a certain kind of intolerable desire.
This is much more interesting than mere antisocial nihilism - not just an errant frame of mind but a potentially life-blocking quasi-existential condition. If Camus was in the closet, his anguish must have been deep. Of course, there's no evidence at all that he was, and plenty that he wasn't, but I will be scrutinising his work closely in future in the light of these circumstantial indicators, plus the rather salient fact that Visconti was attracted to the story.
Consider that the eponymous Stranger may well be the Arab, not Meursault - a significant shift of focus that doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone. Certainly Meursault is hardly an outsider, as the translated title claims. His only fault is a certain impassivity - the word is repeated at key moments - it is really his impassivity that condemns him. But why has he become emotionally impotent? Consider that Meursault is compelled back along the beach towards the Arab accompanied by melodramatic dazzling sunlight and dizziness. That the murdered man is an Arab only aligns this scene with a certain age-old North African cliché that Wilde, Gide and Bowles knew all about. In any case we can't assume it is meaningless. The dizziness is his disorienting attraction to the Arab that drives him to distraction. The five shots could stand for a different kind of shot - consider that we only have Meursault's word for what happened, and evidently whatever did happen cannot speak its name (another age-old cliché). Writ larger, the murder itself is a metaphor for his visceral rejection of a certain kind of intolerable desire.
This is much more interesting than mere antisocial nihilism - not just an errant frame of mind but a potentially life-blocking quasi-existential condition. If Camus was in the closet, his anguish must have been deep. Of course, there's no evidence at all that he was, and plenty that he wasn't, but I will be scrutinising his work closely in future in the light of these circumstantial indicators, plus the rather salient fact that Visconti was attracted to the story.