Erstmal kommt eine Warntafel, daß Chaplin diesmal gar nicht mitspielt, und daß dies sein erstes ernstes und seriöses Drama sei. Ist dann auch ein ganz OK.-seriöses Drama, die schöne Frau, sie liebt den brotlosen Künstler aber, ach!, auch den Luxus und Komfort, den der reiche Schnösel bietet. In Paris! Unter Palmen! Wie so oft wurde die Warnung offensichtlich nicht gelesen, und die Leute waren enttäuscht, daß Chaplin gar nicht mitspielte, und es keine Komödie war, so daß es letztlich auch sein einziges seriöses Drama blieb. Soo seriös ist es auch gar nicht.
We are delighted to be in receipt of the 11th hour news that New York’s Film Forum will be presenting Charlie Chaplin features all week, beginning today with a newly restored print of A Woman of Paris (1923), in honor of its centennial. Scott Eyman, author of the new book, Charlie Chaplin vs. America will be present at a couple of the screenings. Full schedule and ticket information are available…
Adolphe Menjou and Edna Purviance in A Woman of Paris (Charles Chaplin, 1923)
Cast: Edna Purviance, Carl Miller, Adolphe Menjou, Lydia Knott, Charles K. French, Clarence Geldart, Betty Morrissey, Malvina Polo. Screenplay: Charles Chaplin. Cinematography: Roland Totheroh, Jack Wilson. Art direction: Arthur Stibolt. Film editing: Monta Bell, Charles Chaplin. Music (1976 re-release): Charles Chaplin.
Was it Charles Chaplin's great ego that kept him onscreen for almost his entire career as a director? Because on the evidence of A Woman of Paris, his only "serious" film and the only one aside from A Countess From Hong Kong (1967) in which he doesn't appear onscreen (except for blink-and-you'll-miss-him cameos), he was a considerable director of other people. He also had a deftly light touch, not unlike that of Ernst Lubitsch, for livening up a scene with a surprising angle -- such as the way he comments on the frivolity of the Parisian demimonde by concentrating on the somewhat disgusted face of a masseuse as she works on the pampered body of Marie St. Clair (Edna Purviance) and listens to the gossip of Marie's friends. A Woman of Paris is weighed down a bit by the built-in moral assumptions that Marie is to be scorned for allowing herself to become the mistress of Pierre Revel, but Adolphe Menjou's performance as Revel has such gusto that he we understand why Marie is taken with him -- just as we don't understand what she ever saw in the dour, hawk-faced Carl Miller's Jean Millet. A Woman of Paris is a more sophisticated film than it has any right to be, given the melodramatic framework. I like the way Chaplin makes a smart time jump from Marie's departure for Paris to her establishment as Pierre's kept woman. We don't need to know how she got there, just that she did. And the ending, with the obligatory self-sacrifice, is not as saccharine as it could have been: There's wit in the final montage, in which Pierre's automobile passes the wagon in which Marie and one of the orphans she tends are sitting. Pierre's car disappearing into the distance is almost a parody of the endings of Chaplin's "Little Tramp" comedies, in which the Tramp saunters off into the sunset.