Camus haunts Algiers through Visconti's lens while colonial ghosts refuse to stay buried.
In 1967, Visconti came to Algiers for the filming of The Stranger with Mastroianni and Anna Karina. Camus, during his lifetime, had always refused to allow one of his novels to be brought to the screen. His family made another decision. The filming of the film was experienced in Algiers, like a posthumous return of the writer to Algiers. During filming, a young filmmaker specializing in documentaries Gérard Patris attempts a report on the impact of the filming of The Stranger on the Algerians. Interspersed with sequences from the shooting of Visconti's film, he films Poncet, Maisonseul, Bénisti and Sénac, friends of Camus, in full discussions to situate Camus and his work in a sociological and historical context. “The idea is for us to show people, others, ourselves as if they could all be Meursault, or at least the witnesses concerned to his drama.”
Direction
Patris turns a making-of into a ghost story about empire.
Production
Juxtaposition of Visconti's fiction with raw Algerian reality.
Director
Gérard Patris
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Jean Sénac, the gay Algerian poet featured, was later assassinated in 1973—his presence here carries unbearable weight.
Patris originally envisioned a feature; this 24-minute fragment is all that survives, making it accidentally perfect for Camus's themes of absurdity.
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