MovieChat Forums > Lo straniero (1967) Discussion > Tedious Film. How Close To The Book?

Tedious Film. How Close To The Book?

posted 7 years ago by Slime-3
3 replies | jump to latest

I found this a very disappointing and tedious movie despite starring two of my favourite actors. The lead character is entirely unsympathetic so it's hard to give any more of a damn about his fate then he seems to , while the script seems to leave no room for any emotional contact between the Mastroinani and Karina characters. What did she see in the miserable so-and-so? It all seems like a slow trip to nowhere-much.
I appreciate there is a political subtext to the story which no doubt requires more knowledge of the French Colonial system than most of us will possess and I understand that the Camus estate didn't like this rendering of the book. So how far from the book does the film stray and are the characters Camus wrote any more interesting than those portayed by Visconti?

[–] antinea-from-paris 7 years ago

The book is very good, one of the best I've read, but Meursault is supposed to be apathetic. He is just like that, he doesn't care about his death, he's at peace with it.

For Camus, Meursault is an absurd character, someone who lives his life but doesn't care about death or God. Meursault is more an idea than a romantic character.

The book is excellent, but a movie adaptation is very difficult.

[–] Slime-3 7 years ago

Thanks. Well the apathetic aspect was certainly conveyed but the absurd bit didn't seem to make it successfuly into the film. I agree that a movie rendition of such a story must be very difficult. Some books, it seems, simply cannot be satisfactorily filmed.

[–] Jes' Sayin' (5983) 12 days ago

This is very close to the book, and if you've read it, is an excellent visual depiction of it. But I wouldn't recommend the film to anyone who has not read it because so much of the book is the internal thinking of the main character, which is very difficult to represent in film. Dune would be another example.

The movie still succeeds, however, because millions have read this particular book.

Actually, they did change the ending slightly, tipping the probably outcome in a particular direciton that the book does not.