Man from Nowhere (1937) L'homme de nulle part [Restored]

Director: Pierre Chenal
Writers: Luigi Pirandello (play), Pierre Chenal (screenplay)
Stars: Pierre Blanchar, Isa Miranda, Catherine Fonteney

Mathias Pascal, saddled with a stupid wife and a nagging mother-in-law, leaves home and is extremely lucky at several gambling resorts. He returns home and discovers that a drowned man, fished out of the river, bears an uncanny likeness to him and is being buried by his family as him. This, to him, is a pleasant turn of events and he goes to Rome, where he falls in love with Louise Paleari. Count Papiano, a jealous suitor of Louise's, threatens him with arrest unless he produces credentials to prove his identity.

Adapted from a 1904 novel, The Late Mattia Pascal, written by the playwright Luigi Pirandello.

… Apart from the main storyline with its sometimes melodramatic twists and turns and stagy confrontations, there is also a strong comic undertone at various points. James Travers wrote: "…overall this is a pleasing example of late 1930s French cinema, very different in tone to the burlesque comedies, grand historical epics and doom-laden poetic realist melodramas which dominate this era."

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