Summary
In the soot-choked atmosphere of Edwardian London, John Chilcote, a luminary of the British political establishment and a sitting Member of Parliament, finds his existence fractured by the corrosive influence of morphine. As the chemical haze thickens, Chilcote encounters his physical mirror image, John Loder—a man of identical visage but starkly disparate social standing. This encounter precipitates a Faustian arrangement: Loder assumes the legislative mantle and domestic obligations of the deteriorating Chilcote, allowing the latter to retreat into an opiate-induced phantasmagoria. The narrative, an intricate adaptation of Katherine Cecil Thurston’s 'The Masquerader', navigates the liminal space between identity and artifice, chronicling a descent into madness where the boundaries between the self and the doppelgänger dissolve amidst the shadows of the House of Commons. It is a haunting exploration of the 'double' motif, where the protagonist's moral decay is externalized through the spectral presence of his own likeness, leading to a tragic, inevitable collision of their two disparate worlds.
Synopsis
Adaptation of Thurston's Irish novel, "Masquerader". Tells the sinister story of a distinguished British gentleman (Mosjoukine), who, while serving as a member of the House of Commons, also becomes a morphine addict and is tormented by a double of himself.
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