The Man with a Cloak is a 1951 American film noir crime-thriller-drama directed by Fletcher Markle and starring Joseph Cotten, Barbara Stanwyck, Louis Calhern, and Leslie Caron, and based on "The Gentleman from Paris", a short story by John Dickson Carr.

She is initially turned away at the door by his mistress and housekeeper, Lorna Bounty, but persists, presenting Charles with a letter of introduction from his only grandson, Paul, a romantic revolutionary with whom Madeline is in love.

Charles is an old, wealthy, and dissipated rake, who correctly guesses Madeline's purpose in visiting him: she has been sent by Paul to ask him for money to support the revolution in France.

Madeline has one ally, a chance acquaintance named Dupin, a heavy-drinking impecunious poet, to whom she turns when she suspects that Charles' medicine has been laced with poison.

[2] "Another Yesterday", the song performed onscreen by Barbara Stanwyck, was written by Earl K. Brent and dubbed by vocalist Harriet Lee.

The film opens by challenging viewers with the puzzle raised by the following text:“In the lives of all men there are moments of mystery—for man often yearns, and sometimes chooses, to wander alone and nameless.

This is the tale of such a wanderer, once little known and less respected, whose real name later became immortal.”TCM'S Charles Sterritt comments on the revelation of Dupin as Edgar Allan Poe in the last shot of the film: “If you haven't guessed it a few reels before that, you weren't paying much attention in junior high.” Clues throughout the picture include:[3] The TCM site adds the observation that although the film suggests that Poe's name would have meant nothing to the other characters in 1848, he was already well known.