L’Homme de nulle part (1937) - film review

Mathias Pascal is a dreamer, a man of impulse and passion who makes an easy target for Cupid when the enchanting Romilda enters his world.  Believing Mathias to be a wealthy man, Romilda’s shrewish mother Madame Pescatore does all she can to encourage a marriage.  When it latter transpires that Mathias has no money at all, his wife and stepmother make his life a misery.  After a short while away from his home village, Mathias returns to find that he is believed to have died.  Taking advantage of the situation, he decides to make a new start, and moves to Rome where, under the name Adrien Meis, he finds true love, and a dangerous rival...

L’Homme de nulle part is an engaging and idiosyncratic little film from one of the most underrated French filmmakers of the 1930s, Pierre Chenal.  It is based on the well-known novel Feu Mathias Pascal by Luigi Pirandello, which had previously been adapted for cinema by Marcel L’Herbier in 1925.  Two versions of the film were shot in parallel with the same technical crew: one in French, directed by Pierre Chenal, and another in Italian (Il fu Mattia Pascal) by Corrado d’Errico.

Pierre Chenal initially worked on the screenplay with Armand Salacrou, but the collaboration broke down when they failed to achieve the mood and style that the director had envisaged.  Chenal engaged the distinguished poet and playwright Roger Vitrac to complete the screenplay, which involved a revision of virtually all of the dialogue to lighten the tone of the film. The end result is effectively a Gallic version of H.G. Wells’s The History of Mr Polly. 

An uneven narrative and some overly theatrical performances date the film somewhat, but 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.  There are some inspired touches from Chenal and his cinematographer which effectively covey the central character’s innermost feelings.  The sunny impressionistic opening makes a stark contrast with the grim sequence which follows where Mathias finds himself trapped in a bad marriage.  The film’s impressive cast includes Pierre Blanchar as the idealistic butterfly-chasing hero Mathias, Ginette Leclerc as his morally dubious wife and a magnificent Robert Le Vigan as the deliciously villainous Count Papiano.

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