Laura Carroll requests: > I'm looking for a film to discuss in my thesis where a single actor plays > two different parts and the characters look alike or identical. (e.g., they > are twins, siblings, doppelgangers, reincarnations, whatever.) It needs to > be an important part of the story that the two characters look alike - the > plot might turn on mistaken identity or something - but it's clear that they > are not, in the fiction, the same person (so not VERTIGO.) To be of use to > me the film must, must, must be adapted from a literary work (but not a > play), and inherit the look-alikes from it. (Ideally the actor in question > would be a star, or at least a familiar face; and the film would be > something worth studying & thinking about. All your restrictions make it difficult to match exactly what you want! There are, of course, a number of films from plays (especially Shakespeare) involving doubles: 12TH NIGHT, A COMEDY OF ERRORS, etc. There are many film adaptations from novels that have the same actor playing dual roles, but whether the look-alikes are "inherited" and whether the adaptation or original text is "worth studying" is at least a judgment call: various versions of THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER, THE PRISONER OF ZENDA, A TALE OF TWO CITIES, Edna Ferber's COME AND GET IT with Frances Farmer, A STOLEN LIFE with Bette Davis, START THE REVOLUTION WITHOUT ME--a parody of Sabbatini's swashbucklers, etc. The most interesting films that I can think of are, as near as I can tell, from original scripts: THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE, SLIDING DOORS, PASSION OF MIND, DAVE, THE GREAT DICTATOR, etc. Good luck! Don Larsson ----------------------------------------------------------- Donald F. Larsson, English Department, AH 230 Minnesota State University Mankato, MN 56001 ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu