Charles, Dead or Alive | |
Director: | Alain Tanner |
Starring: | François Simon Marcel Robert Marie-Claire Dufour |
Cinematography: | Renato Berta |
Runtime: | 93 minutes |
Country: | Switzerland |
Language: | French |
Gross: | $785.000[1] |
Charles, Dead or Alive (French: Charles mort ou vif) is a 1969 Swiss drama film directed by Alain Tanner.
Produced in reaction to the Protests of 1968, it describes the mid-life crisis of a businessman who decides to drop out of mainstream capitalist life and takes up with couple living a marginal existence on the fringe of society.[2] Meanwhile his daughter has been caught up in a wave of student protest. According to Alison Smith, the Swiss director Tanner translated the May 1968 events in France to Switzerland, hoping for a similar upheaval in his own country, and in the film creating an imaginary student revolt in a society that in reality did not experience the turmoil or revolutionary possibility facing France in May 1968.[3]
1969 Locarno International Film Festival[4]