L'étrange aventure de l'ingénieur Lebel

Three people give testimony about the mysterious death of Albin Laven, including Victor Sjöström in two roles as two men who are both engineers, one of them impersonating the other .

This was a big international hit for director and star Sjöström in 1916. By the time the Swedish film Institute got interested enough to do a restoration in 2002, only about half its original 65 minutes survived, held by the Cinematheque Francais. A few photos and half a dozen long titles to cover missing scenes brings the copy I looked at up to 32 minutes. As a result, it's almost impossible to judge what the original looked like. It's clear that the juxtaposition of two Sjöströms adds a melancholy weirdness to the movie, especially as one of them is quite obviously being poisoned and his wife has left him.

Given the lack of clarity, it's impossible to make a judgment about the excellence of how the two mysteries in the film are handled. The visuals are handled nicely by cinematographer Julius Jaenzon, whose symmetrical compositions emphasize the scenes where two Sjöströms are on view.