IMDb - 7.3/10 (16 votes)
[quote]Originally released in 1926 in hand-tinted prints, for years this silent classic, based on the novel by Luigi Pirandello (1867-1937) was only available in low-quality and incomplete black-and-white prints. It was restored by the Cinémathèque Française and was re-released in 1990. Pirandello's novels and plays were all the rage among the avant garde thinkers of his day: of them, perhaps the best known today is Six Characters In Search Of An Author. In 1934, Pirandello won the Nobel prize for literature. This film stars the legendary (and legendarily difficult) Ivan Mosjoukine as Mathias Pascal. In the story, Pascal is a timid man, and has lived a very constricted life in the midst of a claustrophia-inducing family. When, as a result of his being in an accident, his family believes that he has died, Pascal decides to let them continue to believe it. He has just won some money at roulette, and he can manage quite nicely on that. At first he is overjoyed by his newfound freedom. However, he soon discovers a serious drawback in being an identityless person when he falls in love with the daughter of his landlord in Rome, but has no documents which will permit him to marry her. This film, in addition to being considered a classic, also marks the first onscreen appearance of the extraordinary Swiss actor Michel Simon, as Pascal's best friend Jerome. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide[/quote]
[quote]The White Russian exile Ivan Mosjoukine was arguably the greatest male star of the silent screen. Imagine an actor who combined the matinée idol looks of John Barrymore with the smoldering sexual magnetism of Valentino, the deft physical comedy of Chaplin with the dark Gothic creepiness of Lon Chaney. It sounds impossible, of course - unless you've seen Mosjoukine in action. One glance from those hypnotic, liquid eyes holds more power than all the others combined.
Indeed, there's a strong case for Mosjoukine as the greatest actor in screen history. His stylised High Romantic playing has dated far less in 80 years than the Actor's Studio tricks of Brando and de Niro have dated in half that time. To see him in his great roles - and Matthias Pascal is one of those - is to feel time itself dissolve through the camera's lens. Mosjoukine, like Garbo, is one of a handful of screen stars whose work on celluloid has the immediacy of live performance.
As a vehicle for Mosjoukine and his brilliance, The Late Matthias Pascal is one of the all-time greats. He starts off as an adolescent dreamer, last survivor of a ruined of a ruined aristocratic dynasty (much like Mosjoukine's own family in post-Revolutionary Russia). Blundering his way into marriage, he becomes a harassed and penniless family man, weighed down by wife, baby and the original Mother-In-Law From Hell. Only the awfulness of his home life allows him to tolerate his job - catching rats at the local library, whose mouldering piles of books resemble the last scene of Citizen Kane!
Tragedy strikes, and Matthias runs away. Instantly, his luck changes. Winning a fortune at the Casino in Monte Carlo, he moves on to Rome - where he appears as a young gentleman of fashion. Soon enough, he falls in love with a young girl played by Lois Moran. An infatuation of F. Scott Fitzgerald and the model for Rosemanry in Tender Is the Night, Moran is similarly idealised in this film. Naturally, Matthias longs to do the decent thing and marry her. Yet he faces the same dilemma as most of Pirandello's heroes. If he isn't himself, who on Earth is he?
As a work of cinema, The Late Matthias Pascal is not as spectacularly dotty as L'Herbier's 1924 masterpiece L'Inhumaine. It is also perhaps a shade too long. Yet its bravura sequences - the library, the casino, the dream sequences where Matthias is haunted by his 'dead' double - show L'Herbier as an unjustly neglected genius, worthy of a place next to Lang and von Stroheim in Film Studies 101. His spectacular use of real-life locations is unusual for the 20s. But Mosjoukine is the most spectacular sight of all![/quote]
Be aware that the intertitles are the original italian ones, I don't think it will be too much of an obstacle.
Assistant director was Alberto Cavalcanti.
Il Fu Mattia Pascal (Feu Mathias Pascal - Marcel L'Herbier 1926) - TVRip - XviD - ITA titles.avi 
thanks a bunch Trep!!!
