April In Paris Film Festival – The Late Mathias Pascal

Director: Marcel l’Herbier

1926, 170, NR

Cast: Ivan Mosjoukine, (as Mathias Pascal), Michel Simon, Lois Moran, Pierre Batcheff and Marcelle Pradot.

The Alliance Française of Hartford will provide coffee and pastries after the film.

 

Both tragedy and comedy, The Late Mathias Pascal explores the struggles and possibilities of a man in search of happiness in L’Herbier’s most celebrated film. Critic David Melville wrote: “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. This is a co-production of L’Herbier’s Cinegraphic company, and Alexandre Kamenka’s Films Albatros, the Parisian home of the émigré Russian screen colony and makers of many of the most prestigious films of the decade. L’Herbier at this time was among cinema’s leading avant-garde directors, the equal of Fritz Lang, Abel Gance and Erich von Stroheim, and The Late Mathias Pascal is considered one of his best films, full of picturesque tricks, “spiritual” angles, and dream sequences as it passes from rural chamber-film to burlesque fantasy, with an incursion into expressionist comedy of manners.