A Woman of Paris
1923
- Release Year
- 1923
- Studio
- United Artists
- Director
- Charlie Chaplin
- Screenwriter
- Charlie Chaplin
A Woman of Paris is a disappointment. Far from being the silent masterpiece it is hyped up to be, Woman is a rather stodgy Victorian 'mellerdrama', hinging on several unlikely coincidences. Its theme is the moral regeneration of a fallen woman! Very 19th Century.
Synopsis
The film begins with simple country girl Marie St. Clair (Edna Purviance) and her artist boyfriend Jean (Carl Miller) attempting to run off to Paris and get married. Both face filial disapproval. Leaving Marie at the train station, Jean goes home to pack, whereupon his father conveniently drops dead. In the confusion, Jean forgets about Marie and, feeling betrayed (and not bothering to find out what’s going on), Marie departs alone for Paris.
We jump to one year later; Marie has transformed herself into a glamorous courtesan/kept woman, living in the lap of luxury provided by her paramour, Pierre Revel (Adolphe Menjou). Marie is distressed to read about Pierre’s coming wedding (to another woman). Pierre assures Marie that their relationship can continue despite his marital status. She becomes resigned to the situation. One night, while searching for the location of a party, Marie opens the wrong door to find Jean and his mother, still in mourning, relocated to Paris. (Note: the population of Paris in 1920 was almost 3 million!). Gradually the flame is rekindled, but Marie is torn between marriage to a poor artist and her life of luxury. At one point she announces to Pierre that all she wants is a home, babies, and a man’s respect! Pierre points out the window to a family crossing the street below, with the mother dragging three misbehaving brats after her. Marie is not amused.
Jean proposes to Marie, but reneges when Mama disapproves of his relationship with “that kind of woman.” Marie just happens to overhear his abnegation and leaves in a huff, resigned to her current life of pleasure. Torn between his love for the two women, weakling Jean decides to shoot himself, which he does with fatal effect. Recovering the pistol, Mama decides to off Marie, but reneges when she sees Marie weeping over the body of her son. The two women kneel by the corpse, both overcome with grief, and the scene slowly fades out.
As we fade in we’re back in the country, and Marie is once again a simple country girl. She and Mama seem to be running a sort of private orphanage, looking after unwanted children. Where the money is coming from is unclear. As Marie, on the way to market, hitches a ride on the back of a wagon, a limousine passes, going the other direction. Of course one of the passengers is Pierre. His companion asks him what became of Marie St. Clair; Pierre shrugs, perhaps with a tinge of regret. Fade out; The End.
Discussion
Edna Purviance, comely of face and chunky of figure, turns out to be a decent straight actress. A Woman of Paris was intended to launch her career in the dramatic field. It didn’t happen. The film was a flop, and she made only a couple more movies before retiring. The supporting cast, with one exception, is undistinguished. Particularly weak are the actors who portray Jean and his mother (Carl Miller and Lydia Knott, respectively). Stronger portrayals of these characters would have benefitted the film greatly. The exception mentioned above is, of course, Adolphe Menjou, as the suave, debonair man-of-the-world, a role that suited him to perfection and which he would repeat many more times.
A Woman of Paris is visually undistinguished. Chaplin chose to use his personal cameraman, Rollie Totheroh, who had shot all of Charlie’s films since Work (1915) and would continue in that role through Monsieur Verdoux (1947). While doubtless a competent professional, Totheroh was of the point-the-camera-at-the-actors-and turn-the-crank school of cinematographers. This approach worked well enough in comic shorts, and even in silent features such as The Gold Rush (1925), The Circus (1928), and City Lights (1931), but not so well in a melodrama like A Woman of Paris. A more creative cinematographer (Hal Mohr, Charles Rosher, or John Seitz, perhaps) could have made the film more visually stylish.
Ernst Lubitsch famously praised A Woman of Paris and acknowledged his debt to Chaplin for inspiring such movies as The Marriage Circle (1924), Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925), and So This Is Paris (1926). There is a stark difference, however, between Lubitsch’s three film, which are comedies and display his famous "touch," and the heavy-handed melodrama of Woman.
Though few would dispute Chaplin’s comedic genius, he cannot be ranked as a great director based on A Woman of Paris. While the film has many positive features it is dragged down by the conventions of 19th Century melodrama. Perhaps if he had continued to direct non-comic films he might have attained the status of contemporaries like Stroheim, Ingram, Vidor, and (yes) Lubitsch.