In this three-reel comedy, a marriage farce at a breathtaking pace, Lubitsch plays a young husband who pretends to be dead in order to get rid of his miserable mother-in-law. Although not Lubitsch's first film, this is the earliest preserved work of the great and genial director of comedies. It was believed to be a lost film until, in 1994, a print was found by the Ljubljana Film Museum, a seeming miracle. The preserved print had its debut at the Pordenone Festival of Silent Cinema in 1995. This Lubitsch film was retitled Where Is My Treasure? (Wo ist mein Schatz?) after intervention by the censors (nevertheless, it was still deemed unsuitable for children). When I Was Dead has been cited in some histories as the alternate title for a 1915 film How I Was Murdered, but today it is thought that these are two different films.