The Man Who Lost Himself

The idea is brilliant and perfect as a starter for a brilliant intrigue, whether for a thriller or a screwball comedy. It looks as if both are getting triggered. Brian Aherne comes back to New York a ruined man after a stranded business deal from Puerto Rico, and his business partner down there tells him to swim back home to Puerto Rico. Brian Aherne gets infuriated by his frustration and takes an awful lot of drinks, telling everybody he meets to repeat after him that his colleague Mr. Phillips is a skunk. One of the other guests he meets at the bar happens to look exactly like him, they could be mistaken for each other's doubles, that other man also has something to drown in drinks, so they go celebrating together. That other man never comes back. Brian Aherne is taken for him and brought home to a luxury apartment where he has every difficulty in the world to convince everybody that he is not the right man, and the more he insists, the less he is believed. Then the comedy bolts off tying itself up in knots of inextricable complications, and two women are involved, his wife and his mistress, who only wants to extort her "booby-wooby" for money. Kay Francis is the wife, always excellent, and she eventually finds out that she is a widow, since the real man was lost in an accident at night. In spite of all the complications and muddled up intrigues, something seems to come out right in the end, while the one who really has a hard job to get through is the wonderful old Hungarian butler S. Z. Sakall, crowning the comedy with his constant worries.

real pity

this movie could have been rather good. they had Kay Francis and Brian Aherne, even Nils Asther..

10 minutes into the movie its painfully obvious that this has something of a Helen Keller Musical.

there's no direction, the plot is dull and stupid and the actors don't seem to have been given a script before shooting.

they should have simply made a romance with Kay and Nils in the leads.. that i would have liked to see.

this movie is an infuriating waste of talent, time and money

"The Man Who Lost Himself" 1941 is a cool little Universal "B" picture and I was lucky enough to buy a nice 16mm original print for my last birthday! Love these little "B" flicks! My release print which was struck in 1947 was from Variety Film Distributors, they had changed the main credits and removed the words "Universal Pictures". Variety Film Distributors was formed in 1938 and was headquartered in New York City on Fifth Avenue. They were the exclusive foreign distributors of both Reliable Pictures Corporation and Majestic Pictures Releases. They had offices in Tokyo, Paris and Calcutta. They were confidential advisers to foreign buyers, South America excluded. They were still in operation in 1951, and the only thing I could find about them was the basic corporate information most of which I have related here. Apparently Universal Pictures still holds the copyright on "The Man Who Lost Himself" so contrary to popular belief it is not in the public domain, even though there is a copy of the entire film on You Tube, also with the Variety Film Distributors main title. About the picture, there is an interesting scene when actor Brian Aherne is sitting at the table in the nightclub with the double of himself, playing both rolls as John Evans and Malcolm Scott. For this scene they used an early "traveling matte" or "Blue Screen" as it was known then by, special effect. When the character on the left side of the table bends down you can see part of the traveling mattes edges it almost looks like a video effect! Last night we screened the print for the second time on the big screen! This picture was excellent! Love S.Z. Sakall - he's always a rip in any picture! Kay Francis was a beautiful woman! Brian Aherne was a top notch fine actor! The plot has been done a few times, once by my good friend and former boss Richard L. Bare and his fine picture "This Side Of The Law" 1950 for Warner Brothers. Of course the sexual innuendos in both films are hilariously bazaar! Think about it, getting to have sex with a woman you have never seen before who thinks you are her husband!? Sounds good to me! At 72 minutes it's a gem of a picture! Love it when she puts her high heel in Aherne's face in the back seat of the car near the end of the picture! Suck it baby! Best of all, here comes my standard comment: There are no woman with colored hair, no actors covered with stupid tattoos, no bad language, no cell phones, I-phones, smart phones, dumb phones, computers, covid-19 masks, ridiculous car chases, dumb teenagers, horrible rock music, rap music, new country music (which is just rock 'n roll) no television sets, sex scenes, people yelling at each other for no reason, and no unnecessary diversity in the cast, unlike movies now, you've got to toss in everything from women from Swahili to LGBTTQQIAA++++! (Whatever that means?) I give it ten stars for that alone! No political correctness in my screening room, no way! Now where did I put that Covid-19 mask? How are we going to eat the bird with a mask on? Happy Thanksgiving 2020!

I stretched to give this film eight stars because the screenplay is not worthy of that. The script is not only choppy, with many holes in places, but it's confusing, especially with the opening. It's never clear what Malcolm Scott's background or standing is - his business, family, stature, etc. Rather, the film is replete with references to him as a womanizer, adulterer, probable alcoholic, maybe even a crook and all around ne'er-do-well. His real background and physical problems are just touched on toward the end.

My stretch in rating "The Man Who Lost Himself" is based on the acting. First, of Brian Aherne's character, especially after his John Evans gets into the role of his look-alike, Malcolm Scott. And second, by the wonderful cast of some of the top comedy supporting actors of the period. Any comedy that includes S. Z. Sakall or Sig Ruman is bound to be good if only for their presence and roles. They aren't rollicking roles here, but play very nicely with Aherne's character(s). Henry Stephenson is another supporting actor who always adds a nice touch to any film he is in. And Kay Francis is very good as Adrienne Scott.

It's sort of amusing when someone comments on a movie made in 1941 as similar or identical to one made 50 years later. I've read some reviews like that. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Or is this some sort of different prescience - in reverse, maybe (defying the very logic of the meaning)? There have probably been three dozen or more movies made based on two characters who look alike (doppelganger is the term for look-alikes who are not related, as in identical twins, or look-alike cousins).

Anyway, this movie is based on a 1918 English novel by Henry De Vere Stacpoole. In it, American Victor Jones travels to London and finds that he's an exact look-alike of a member of the British aristocracy. Other than the fact that this and many other movies have doppelgangers as the core of the stories, there is little similarity in plots.

Here are a couple favorite lines from this film.

Adrienne Scott, "You know, you really shouldn't leave boobie woobie all alone in the library. She might be frightened by a book."

John Evans, "I didn't sleep a wink. I don't know what bothered me more - my thoughts or your snoring."

This 1941 Universal comedy pairs two attractive stars in a not-so-screwball comedy that tries hard but has some problems. Aherne plays two look-alike men who switch places after drinking in a bar. When he wakes up the next morning he finds he mistaken for a millionaire married to Kay Francis. As he tries to convince people he's not the rich guy, he discovers the millionaire was just out of a nut house and had a shady history of embezzlement, adultery, and forgery. But the more he insists he's not the millionaire, the more everyone is convinced he's still nutty.

So-so but complete copy includes scenes listed as missing in other reviews, but probably don't really help much. The plot is just too far-fetched ends up repeating itself. Aherne and Francis are good together but the script and director (and maybe the editor) deflate the soufflé.

Co-stars include S.Z. Sakall, Nils Asther, Henry Stephenson, Dorothy Tree, Janet Beecher, Henry Kolker, Sarah Padden, Sig Ruman, and Marc Lawrence as a gangster named DeSoto. Billy Benedict has a nice bit as the messenger boy in the elevator. Silent star Charles Ray is supposedly in the cast in an unnamed part.