MR. KLEIN

Paris, January 1942. France is occupied by the Germans. Robert Klein, apparently apolitical and amoral, is a well-to-do art dealer, Roman Catholic and Alsatian by birth, who takes advantage of French Jews who need to sell artworks to raise cash to leave the country.

One day, the local Jewish newspaper, addressed to him, is delivered to his home. He learns that another Robert Klein who has been living in Paris, a Jew sought by police, has had his own mail forwarded to him in an apparent attempt to destroy his social reputation and make him a target of official anti-Semitism. He reports this to the police, who remain suspicious he may be reporting this scheme to disguise his own true identity.

His own investigations lead him in contradictory directions, to Klein who lives in a slum while having an affair with his concierge and to Klein who visits a palatial country estate where he has seduced an apparently Jewish married woman.

When the art dealer cannot locate the other Klein, authorities require him to offer proof of his French non-Jewish ancestry. While waiting for the documentation to arrive, he struggles to track down his namesake and learn his motivation, even breaking off an opportunity to flee the country in order to investigate further. Before he can resolve the situation by either means, he is caught up in the July 1942 roundup of Parisian Jews. As he is hustled into a dark tunnel, his lawyer arrives with complete proof of his non-Jewish ancestry. Klein blankly ignores the lawyer's pleas and continues into the tunnel.

The film offers no clear resolution of its contradictory evidence and dead ends. It ends as he is reunited with Jews who once were his clients as they board boxcars for Auschwitz.

Klein is caught in the roundup of Parisian Jews and, despite receiving proof of his non-Jewish ancestry, ignores his lawyer’s pleas and boards the boxcars to Auschwitz with former clients.

The ending leaves Klein’s fate and motivations deliberately ambiguous, refusing to clarify whether he is a victim of circumstance, a man seeking penance, or simply caught in an inescapable bureaucratic nightmare. The unresolved conclusion underscores the arbitrariness and terror of state persecution, while also highlighting the moral costs of Klein’s earlier indifference. The film’s refusal to offer closure is its final indictment of a world where identity and justice are dangerously malleable.