A WOMAN OF PARIS (1923) B/W "silent" 75m dir: Charles Chaplin

w/Edna Purviance, Adolphe Menjou, Carl Miller, Lydia Knott, Charles French, Betty Morrissey, Malvina Polo

Be forewarned: the following material contains specific story information you may not want to know before viewing the film:

From Georges Sadoul's Dictionary of Films: "In a small French village, Marie (Purviance) plans to elope with her sweetheart, Jean (Miller). While she waits at the station, Jean's father (French) dies and, misunderstanding the delay, Marie leaves for Paris alone. Later, in Paris, she is elaborately gowned as the mistress of Pierre (Menjou), a wealthy gentleman who plans to marry her. In Montmartre, Marie accidentally meets Jean again ....

"Famous sequences: the reflections from the windows of an unseen train passing over Marie's face as she leaves the station; the contrast between the bustle in the kitchens and the rich diners; Jean's discovery that Marie is a kept woman through finding a collar in her bureau; Marie tossing her diamond necklace out the window then changing her mind and rushing after it as Pierre plays his saxophone; Marie gossiping with two excited girls as she is massaged by a stone-faced masseuse with a disinterested air; Jean's grotesque and tragic suicide amid the splendors of a ballroom; the final, unrecognized, meeting between Marie and Pierre in the country. Chaplin himself appears, unbilled, only in the bit part of a porter at the station.

"Subtitled 'a drama of fate,' A Woman of Paris was originally to have been called Destiny and later became Public Opinion. It opens with this preface: 'Humanity is not made up of heroes and traitors but simply of men and women. And passions stir them, good and bad. Nature has given these to them. They wander in blindness. The ignorant condemn their mistakes, the wise man has pity on them.'

"'I treated the subject,' Chaplin said, 'in the simplest possible manner, avoiding emphasizing or underlining in a conscious attempt to show as much as possible through suggestion. Without exception, people questioned have remarked on two things: at the beginning, the the arrival and departure of the train without showing it; later, the gap of a year in the life of the woman.' Later he said: 'My film did not have all the hoped for success because its ending leaves one without hope.'

"'A Woman of Paris did not have a success comparable to that of his other films,' René Clair noted, then added: 'The silent American cinema was renewed through this failure. He proved with this film that above everything he was an artist. It isn't important that other actors lend him his mask. He is everywhere, he creates each character. Can I have seen its scenes ten or twelve times? Each time, I admire their precise rhythm, their enchantment, their ease ... Each detail of these well-known scenes can be anticipated, but their human value never becomes exhausted.'

"Stylistically, it is extremely simple, with a classical concision and a lack of effects. Above all, it is notable for its introduction of character psychology insight into the dramatic film, developed mainly through the use of a third-person narrative and the use of suggestive details, accessories, and metaphorical allusions. In order to obtain a natural quality from his actors, Chaplin handled them in the studio as if it were real life.

"The film's underlying theme is what would be called, thirty years later, 'lack of communication.' A critic in 1923 in Cinémagazine shuddered 'in the face of a nothingness greater than death, that of the mutual lack of understanding between two human beings, all human beings, the profound Chaplin, following Maupassant, seems to imply. Is not a human being always alone, alone, alone ...?'"