Feu Mathias Pascal (1926) - film review

After the death of his father, Mathias Pascal learns that his family is in dire financial straits.  He must abandon his dreams of an unfettered, carefree existence and finds work as an assistant librarian in the little town where he lives, Miragno.  Whilst trying to court the attractive Romilde for his friend Pomino, Mathias unwittingly wins himself a bride and a foul-tempered mother-in-law.  Happy in love, Mathias does not regret the lost of his freedom, but when his mother and baby daughter die on the same day he has a sudden change of heart.  With nothing to keep him in Miragno, he takes the train to Monte-Carlo, where he wins a fortune at the gambling tables.  On his way home, he picks up a newspaper and reads an article announcing his recent demise.  When the mutilated body of a drowned man was found in Miragno, it was assumed that Mathias had committed.  Mathias can hardly believe his stroke of good fortune.  At last he is a free man!  Rejoicing in his release from social and domestic responsibilities, Mathias sets out for Rome to start a new life, but soon discovers that even freedom has its limits...

Feu Mathias Pascal was the third film that Marcel L’Herbier made for his production company Cinégraphic, which had been founded in 1922 by Russian émigré Alexandre Kamenka.  It followed Résurrection (1923), which L’Herbier was forced to abandon when he contracted typhoid, and the director’s avant-garde masterpiece L’Inhumaine (1924).  The film is closely based on the novel Il fu Mattia Pascal by the eminent Italian author and playwright Luigi Pirandello, the first of his works to be adapted for the cinema.  The same novel has subsequently been adapted, less successfully, as L’Homme de nulle part (1937) by Pierre Chenal and Le Due vite di Mattia Pascal (1985) by Mario Monicelli.

By the time L’Herbier made Feu Mathias Pascal, one of his most ambitious films, he had already established himself as one of France’s leading film directors, renowned for making quality films with a distinctive visual flair.  Along with Abel Gance and Jean Epstein, L’Herbier was one of the great experimentalists of French cinema, but his films also had immense popular appeal, because they embraced subjects which a mainstream cinema audience could easily engage with.  Feu Mathias Pascal is by far the most conventional and accessible of L’Herbier’s silent films, an enjoyable mélange of farce and melodrama that shows a much lighter side to the director than is seen in his better known works.  The film’s exuberant comedy evokes something of Ernst Lubitsch’s early silent films, and many of the gags would not be out of place in a Buster Keaton or Marx Brothers film - for instance, the one where the hero rips off the initials on his hat and deposits them, appropriately, in a letter box.

Almost as a homage to the great cinematic magician Georges Méliès, Lherbier employs the camera trickery that he had perfected in his earlier films for purely comical effect.  Double exposure allows the reborn Mathias Pascal to confront his former self, whilst slow motion is used, à la Sam Peckinpah, for a scene in which the hero imagines himself attacking his romantic rival.  Even the dream sequences appear to be a humorous parody of those seen in previous silent films.   In contrast to some of L’Herbier’s earlier films, which are drenched in self-conscious artistry, this one is far more understated, and therein lies its charm.  Having mastered his art, L’Herbier is far less consumed by the need to prove himself.  Instead of prostrating himself on the altar of cinematic art, he devotes himself to a humbler and perhaps worthier cause, diverting his audience and bringing a little sunshine into the world.  What is perhaps most striking about this film is its deliberate rejection of stylisation and artifice - it possesses a naturalism that is at times intensely evocative of Italian neo-realism, most noticeably in the beautifully shot exterior location sequences.

Of course, it takes far more than a great director to make a great film, and L’Herbier’s own contribution to Feu Mathias Pascal is matched by that of his leading man, the legendary actor Ivan Mozzhukhin.  Having found fame in his native Russia, Mozzhukhin went on to become one of the leading stars of French cinema in the 1920s.  With his striking good looks and magnetic charm, the actor was France’s answer to Rudolph Valentino, eagerly sought-after by many notable filmmakers of the time.  He headlined Viktor Tourjansky’s Michel Strogoff (1926) and Alexandre Volkoff’s Casanova (1927), and also showed great promise as a writer and director with Le Brasier ardent (1923).  Mozzhukhin’s arresting star presence, together with his flair for downbeat comedy and an ability to convey intense inner emotional conflict beneath an apparently cool exterior, is perhaps what most makes Feu Mathias Pascal such a compelling and rewarding film.  Another cinema giant, Michel Simon, appears in the film in one of his early supporting roles, stealing each of his scenes with a mischievous twinkle.  

Another of the film’s strengths is its impressive design, which is the work of two other cinema greats, Lazare Meerson and Alberto Cavalcanti.  This was Meerson’s first engagement as a designer; he would subsequently have an immense impact on early French cinema through his collaborations with directors René Clair, Jacques Feyder and Abel Gance, working on such films as L’Argent (1928), Sous les Toits de Paris (1930) and La Kermesse héroïque (1935).  Cavalcanti not only distinguished himself as a set designer but would later become a film director in his own right, helming such classics as Captain Fracasse (1929), Went the Day Well? (1942) and Champagne Charlie (1944).

Although Feu Mathias Pascal was a commercial and critical success in its time, today it is generally less well regarded than L’Herbier’s other great works.  This can largely be put down to artistic snobbery, since the film offers far less visual innovation than L’Herbier is known for and adheres more rigidly to the principles of conventional screen narrative.  The film may lack the inspired stylisation of L’Herbier’s masterworks - Eldorado (1921), L’Inhumaine (1924) and L’Argent (1928) - but this does not preclude it from being a cinematic tour de force.  Here the director displays not only his talent for experimentation, admittedly on a more modest scale than his devotees might wish for, but also an extraordinary capacity for telling a complex story in an engaging fashion, without resorting to the narrative sleight of hand to which many of his contemporaries were prone.   Feu Mathias Pascal is epic in scale and yet intimate in detail, balancing its moments of humour and poignancy with a rare delicacy and warmth.  No one should be put off by the film’s daunting three hour run-time.  This is assuredly the most humane and humorous of all Marcel L’Herbier’s films.

© James Travers 2010

Write a review for this film...

What do you think of this film?