Abstract
A comparative analysis of the film The Two Lives of Mattia Pascal (1985) by Mario Monicelli and Luigi Pirandello's novel The Late Mattia Pascal (1904). Il focuses on question why the film adaptation reduces the story just to a curiouse piece of news.
Monicelli's work in fact offers only its semnatic interpretation without any humouristic dimension. In other films by the director - The Great War (1959) anbd For Love and Gold (1966) - we can find characteristics conforming to the conception of the "sentiment of the contrary" that Pirandello presents in his famous essay On Humour (1908).
Our work also reveals: i. Monicelli's biased reading of the novel in question that led him to an intentional simplification of the meaning od the story which in the film id antihumoristically "composed". ii.
The high subjectivity of the sentiment of the contrary that negates the existence of an ideal community or understanding among humourists: Manicelli failed to get Pirandello's point of view, but this fact does not deny him qualities of a humourist.