From Monthly Film Bulletin, February 1976 (Vol. 43, No. 505). A tinted restoration of this film was presented at Bologna’s Il Cinema Ritrovato with a beautiful, large-orchestra score composed and conducted by Timothy Brock a few years back, and I must say that this very impressive presentation substantially transformed my original skepticism, fully demonstrating how much difference a serious archival restoration can make. And now Flicker Alley has just brought out this version on a lovely Blu-Ray, which I can heartily recommend. – J.R.
Feu Mathias Pascal
(The Late Mathias Pascal)
France, 1925 Director: Marcel L’Herbier
Miragno, Italy. Acting on behalf of herself, her son Mathias and
her sister-in-law Scolastique, Maria Pascal authorises agent
Batta Maldagna to sell her property; worried about her debts, he
sells it at one-sixth its value. Mathias’ shy friend Pomino, secretly in
Iove with Romilde Pescatore, asks Mathias to propose to her on his
behalf at a village fête. Discovering that she is-in love with himself,
Mathias marries her instead, but soon finds his life made miserable
by his shrewish mother-in-law, who holds sway over Romilde. He
goes to work at the chaotic municipal library, where his time is
largely spent contriving to catch rats. After the nearly simultaneous
deaths of his mother and infant daughter, he flees to Monte Carlo
where, by following the advice of a gambler who tells him to bet on
12, he unexpectedly wins a fortune. On the train back to Miragno,
he reads an account of his own suicide in a newspaper and decides
to take advantage of this mistake by assuming a new identity.
Switching trains, he proceeds to Rome and begins to check into a
luxury hotel until he realises that he cannot refister without giving
himself away. Renting a room from Anselmo-Paleari, and calling
himself Mr. Adrien after hearing the name of Anselmo’s daughter
Adrienne, he falls in love with her and is horrified to discover that
she’s engaged to tourist guide Térence Papiano — a match encouraged
by alcoholic medium and fellow boarder Saldia Caporale, who
greatly influences Anselmo. During a seance, Térence’s epileptic
brother Scipion steals 50,000 lire from Mathias’ room. Unable to
press charges because of his secret identity, Mathias secures
Adrienne’s promise not to marry Térence and returns to Miragno,
frightening and intimidating Romilde -– now married to Pomino, and
with a child by him — along with her mother and Maldagna, now
running for re-election as mayor. After putting his affairs in order
and visiting his ‘grave’, he returns to Rome and marries Adrienne.
It is one of the unfortunate consequences of historical short-
sightedness that the only work of Marcel L’Herbier now available
in this country is the dated Feu Mathias Pascal, while the extraordinary
L’Argent — made only three years later, but not really ‘discovered’
until 1968, by Noël Burch — should remain inaccessible. Checking
the standard film histories, one finds that at least one reason
for the earlier film’s reputation still remains at least partially
viable: as a vehicle for Ivan Mosjoukine, it amply serves — through
its arsenal of shifting stylistic strategies — as a showcase for his
versatile talents. And from a more academic standpoint, the movie
affords one the opportunity to see the first film performances by
Michel Simon (made up so heavily that he almost resembles
Catherine Hessling) and Pierre Batcheff (the principal character in
Un Chien Andalou), and the first work in Paris by Cavalcanti and
Lazare Meerson. Less enduring, alas, are most of the qualities that
originally gave the film some status as a literary adaptation. It was
the first of Pirandello’s works to be brought to the screen, and
L’Herbier still speaks with pride about the approving letter he
received from the author.) It is, to be sure, unusually faithful to the
novel’s plot: although Mathias Pascal’s first-person narration is
dropped along with several characters (such as his childhood tutor)
and incidents (such as his eye operation in Rome), a running time
of over three hours allows L’Herbier to retain a considerable amount
of the original’s detail, which location shooting in San Gimignano,
Rome and Monte Carlo (along with studio work in France) further
enhances. The problem is that Il Fu Mattia Pascal, far from being a
‘classic’ novel, isn’t even a very good one; a sprawling, meandering
account of a glib aristocrat demonstrating his apparent superiority to
everyone around him, it takes over three hundred pages to embellish
an anecdote that Hawthorne, in a story like Wakefield, could have
managed in ten — and it similarly takes the film a full ninety minutes
to arrive at the hero’s sudden decision to assume a new identity.
Much of the film’s exposition, moreover, is handled by titles which
the visuals mainly illustrate. But it should be acknowledged, in all
fairness,_ that many individual shots and sequences are brought off
with a distinctive visual flair: the first encounter of Romilde and
Mathias, passing on the street, uses natural lighting to split both
characters and screen into a striking division of white and black,
while the comparably expressionist village fête makes an affecting
use of smoke and silhouettes; and a graceful set of dissolves takes us
from this event straight into Mathias’ marriage, for once without
a title. Elsewhere, irises, superimpositions, slow-motion, blurred
focus and tilted angles are all put to expressive narrative use; and
if in each case these devices seem purely ‘localised’ rather than the
product of any consistent strategy, they resemble in this respect
Mosjoukine’s performance, which often appears to aim more at
isolated effects than at a harmonious creation. Oscillating between
the varying stances of a romantic lead, a sorrowful young Werther,
a hapless innocent and a cadaverous Nosferatu — and thereby
suggesting that he has more identities at his disposal than the
character he is playing — Mosjoukine is most inspired in scenes
which seem to reflect a Keaton influence, in the use of gadgets as
well as in his own demeanor: attaching a string to his daughter’s
cradle so that he can rock her by dancing a little jig while knotting
his tie or, in the film’s most appealing scene, enlisting the reluctant
aid of two kittens in ridding the ramshackle library where he works
of some bibliophile rodents that are nearly as big as the cats.
JONATHAN ROSENBAUM
