“Moody, elegantly disturbing, and impeccably made by a master director.” (LA Times)

“Both a work of history, unstinting in its concrete depiction of political hatred and fear, and a portrait of the metaphysics of tyranny—a classic of doppelgänger paranoia that gathers the theme on a single string and pulls it into modernity.” (The New Yorker)

“This has nothing to do with me,” unceasingly professes the unscrupulous Catholic art dealer Robert Klein (superbly played by Alain Delon), as he lives the good life in Nazi-occupied Paris. His apartment is full of valuable tapestries, paintings, and sculptures, most acquired at a steal from desperate Jews as they fled the country. One day, he finds a Jewish newspaper addressed to “Mr. Robert Klein” on his doorstep and must frantically prove his Aryan heritage to the police while also searching obsessively for the Jew who shares his name. “Moody, elegantly disturbing, and impeccably made by a master director” (LA Times), Mr. Klein was blacklisted American director Joseph Losey’s first film in French, with a screenplay by Battle of Algiers writer Franco Solinas, assistant director Fernando Morandi, and an uncredited Costa-Gavras (who was originally set to direct).

Screenings in honor of Meyer Ackerman (1923–2019)

My father, Meyer Ackerman, was a visionary distributor and theater owner whose art cinemas brought hard-to-find films to audiences in and around New York City (including the Fine Arts in Scarsdale) in the decades before home video and the internet. He was the original US distributor of Mr. Klein and premiered the film at his 68th Street Playhouse on Third Avenue in Manhattan in 1976. I remember seeing it there and, even as a teenager, finding it haunting and mysterious. – JBFC Programming Director Brian Ackerman