Charles, Dead or Alive


Charles, Dead or Alive is a 1969 Swiss drama film directed by Alain Tanner. The film won a Golden Leopard, the top prize, at the 22nd Locarno Film Festival in 1969.

Plot

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. 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.

Cast

Reception

Awards

1969 Locarno International Film Festival