'Colonialist wounds reopened' New film of Camus’ L’Étranger reignites debate over Algeria

More than 80 years after it was published, Albert Camus’ L’Étranger remains one of the most widely read and fiercely contested French books in the world.

- Kim Willsher

Until now, few attempts have been made to adapt the novel, which was published in English as The Outsider, for television or cinema; it is considered problematic and divisive for its portrayal of France’s colonisation of Algeria.

The culture website Cult News said: “Adapting Albert Camus’ L’Étranger for the cinema is rather like climbing the Himalayas.”

The French director Francois Ozon has attempted to rise to the challenge with a black-and-white adaptation of the 1942 novel that has revived the polemic over what Camus said - or failed to say - about French Algeria, which ended in 1962 after a war of independence.

Ozon’s L’Etranger will be released in the UK next year and has had mixed reviews. The film is long, atmospheric and is as ponderous as the taciturn antihero Meursault, a French settler in Algiers, played by Benjamin Voisin.

Meursault’s failure to show emotion following his mother’s death and cold detachment after he kills “an Arab” on a beach lead to him being condemned to death by decapitation.

In 1967 the Italian director Luchino Visconti made the first film of the novel, starring Marcello Mastroianni, but it was considered a failure. Visconti had wanted Alain Delon in the role but was reportedly overruled by the film studio.

Nedjib Sidi Moussa, a political scientist, teacher and author of several books on Algeria, said the new film succeeded in conveying the absurdity of Camus’ first novel.