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.