Actor Ivan Mozjoukine plays Thomas Kean, a brilliant stage actor who falls in love with an aristocrat. Although he is a superstar of the acting world, possibly one of the first to ever attain such status, actors at the time were considered to be second class citizens. He is also in debt. There is a funny scene where Kean and his friends escape the creditors through makeup and disguise. However this makes him totally unsuitable for marriage to a woman of high class and when she sees him fraternizing with street performers (nobodys) that he used to work with before advancing to stage acting, the woman pretends she doesn't know him and goes off to marry someone richer. There is a scene in a barroom that could be considered innovative, the editor uses quick cuts and montage to create a sense of frenzied drunkenness and delirium that Kean begins to slip into. At the end Keen is to play Hamlet on stage but sees his former object of affection in the audience...with another man. He is so traumatized that he forgets his lines and delivers another speech that is not scripted. He dies in a hospital for the poor with only his actor friend standing by him. The alternate title of the movie is disorder and genius, and Mozjoukine playing Kean was as though one became the other, Mozjoukine's life in person was much like Keans life in story, right up to the end of it where he himself also died in the poorhouse with his friend (who played Kean's friend I don't remember his name) standing at his side.
