Luigi Pirandello’s The late Mattia Pascal: issues of likelihood in the novel and in its film versions

Abstract

The late Mattia Pascal, from 1904, was the first success of Sicilian writer Luigi Pirandello. The novel is set in the early 1900s in the fictional town of Miragno, located in Liguria, and also in Rome. Returning from a trip triggered by a family tragedy, for which he had left without warning, Mattia discovers that he has been presumed dead. Feeling unwanted by his wife and mother-in-law, with whom he had a conflictive relationship, he decides to take advantage of the situation to change his name and his life. Critics rejected this intrigue and accused Pirandello of cerebralism and unlikelihood. The author responded to them in a 1921 article in which he presented some newspaper reports of real-life events, subsequent to the novel, whose plot was as absurd, if not more so, than that of his fiction. Despite the criticism, the novel had at least three film versions: Feu Mathias Pascal (Marcel L'Herbier, 1926), L'Homme de nulle part (Pierre Chenal, 1937) and The Two Lives of Mattia Pascal (Le due vite di Mattia Pascal, Mario Monicelli, 1985). The aim of this article is to analyze how the films dealt with episodes of potential unlikelihood and to discuss the solutions found by the directors in comparison to those adopted in the novel. The discussion is based on concepts from Gérard Genette (1972), Umberto Eco (1994), Diana Luz Pessoa de Barros (2005) and Pirandello himself (1972 [1921]).