English Title: The Living Dead Man
Cinégraphic
Starring: Ivan Mozzhukhin, Marcelle Pradot, Lois Moran
Directed by: Marcel L’Herbier

Synopsis: In this silent film from France, Mathias Pascal (Ivan Mozzhukhin) suffers from numerous tragedies.  Seeking asylum from the pain he travels unannounced to Monte Carlo.  On his way home his life changes when he realizes that a body in the river has been mistaken for him and everyone thinks he is dead.

Kitty Cameos: This film contains a very strange scene involving cats.  Mathias works at a library which is situated inside an abandoned church.  As such the place is overrun with rats.  In one scene Mathias has devised a way to get rid of the rats.  He has brought in two small cats, a tabby and a black cat, which he ties to two long strings.

Mathias settles down to read a book on rat hunting.  When he sees the rats emerge in the book piles nearby he measures out the length of string he thinks is necessary and re-ties the ends around the cats’ collars.

Kitty Carnage Warning! Picking up each cat by the scruff, he then hurls them across the room at the rats on the books.  We see the tabby cat land as the rats scatter, all of them looking confused.

The black cat is not seen landing and after that the cats are not even shown again.  There is no action at the end of the strings during that shot and it isn’t until the camera cuts to another shot do the strings move (people are now pulling on them, obviously.)  We give this a kitty carnage warning simply because the way he tosses the cats is pretty rough.

Final Mewsings: Sorry, but you can’t get cats to chase rats on cue.

Relevant Links:

To discuss this film and other cats in movies and on television, join us on
Facebook and Twitter.