This film opens with an incredibly disturbing scene: a woman is undergoing a medical examination… standing and naked in a vast room with a nurse to take notes, a ‘doctor’ measures her facial features in order to determine her status: real French or Jew… this open scene sets the tone of the film, though the narrative is far more complex than would first seem…


1942, France. The country is divided into the Nazi occupied North and the Vichy controlled South. The Nazi racial policy is implemented in both. Mr Klein is a Catholic art dealer, making money out of Jews fleeing the regime.
Then ANOTHER Mr Klein – a Jew and a communist – deliberately confuses the machinery that is Nazi France as to the identity of the first Mr Klien… a cat and mouse games ensues… all the familiar Losey traits are here: mirrors, staircases, and shadows… and these elements fuse effortlessly with the narrative to forge a film marrying form and content to explore the ambiguity of identity: personal, national, racial… the mirrors reflect the actual status of the two Mr Kliens: they look the same, people confuse them… nothing is what it seems and the camera work reminds one of Se7en.


This, the final film in the Losey triptych, reminds one of Hitchcock’s North by Northwest… however, it is far darker. It is also one of Losey's more political films… an investigation of France’s complicity during the dark years of WW2… an incredible piece of work from 1976 and the beginning of Losey’s final phase of movie making, leaving the UK behind and working in France.

Film introduced by David Deamer.