In 1923 Charlie Chaplin released his second feature film,
A Woman of Paris. Although this film
is all but forgotten because Chaplin is remembered for his classic comedies,
there is a lot of value in this rare drama from one of the greatest clowns of
the silent era. Chaplin had wanted to create a serious drama for his long time
leading lady Edna Purviance, who had starred alongside him in a great number of
comedies. As she got older and more mature, he felt she was no longer suited to
comedic roles.
But A Woman of
Paris reveals that Chaplin could be equally impressive writing and
directing drama. Before watching this film and certainly before I knew anything
about it, I was asking myself if any film maker of that time was making
contemporary human dramas. Just about everything that has survived from the
period is either comedy, period epic (Ben
Hur and The Birth of a Nation) or
adventure (the films of Douglas Fairbanks). As it turns out, A Woman of Paris was actually one of the
first of its kind. King Vidor’s great film The
Crowd is another such example, but that was five years later. I learned by
from Chaplin historian David Robinson that Chaplin’s film defied conventions in
several ways by having the film’s heroine be a courtesan, the hero is weak and
the presumed villain is debonair and amusing. Apparently also at a time when
Hollywood held parents in high regard, here was a film that depicted mothers
and fathers as the basic cause of the characters’ tragic fate.
Purviance’s title character is Marie, a young woman who
lives in a small village outside Paris. She is held captive by a domineering
father who then refuses to allow her back inside after she sneaks out to meet
her boyfriend, Jean (Carl Miller). They make plans to run off to Paris
together, but Jean’s father objects and won’t give entry to Marie. The father
then dies suddenly on the night the young lovers are supposed to leave. Marie
feels jilted and goes on her own. The film jumps ahead one year and Marie
basically has a sugar daddy who keeps her housed, clothed and fed in lavish
style. This wealthy man is Pierre (Adolphe Menjou) and he is soon to be married
to another wealthy socialite, but he doesn’t see why that means his
relationship with Marie has to change. Marie sees families on the street and
dreams of a ‘normal’ life. When Jean reenters her life, she decides to leave
Pierre, but then she overhears Jean telling his mother that he would never
marry Marie.
The plot is very melodramatic. To read a description
might give the impression that the film is all big gestures and grandstanding.
I was surprised by the realness of the acting especially from Menjou (no
surprise he went on to a successful career in talking films). The style of
acting is an incredible departure from what we see in Chaplin’s comedy which
demands big expressions and wild gesticulation to convey the emotion without
spoken dialogue. We see similar acting styles in the adventure and epic films
of the period. But Chaplin showed he could direct dramatic acting and make it
look convincing in a whole new way.
To watch the film without the credits, you’d never know
that it was written and directed by Chaplin. Aside from a walk on cameo in the
vein of Alfred Hitchcock (although this predates Hitchcock’s practice by four
years), Chaplin doesn’t appear in the film. Anyone looking to explore the
Chaplin we generally know and love could easily skip A Woman in Paris as it has little bearing on his comedy work. But
if you’re interested in the full experience and want to see how his profound sadness
in life could be transmuted into a moving film, this is a good place to start.
After all, his best work in comedy blended laughs with big emotions. Think
about The Kid with its
heart-wrenching scene of the child being stripped away from The Tramp’s clutches
or City Lights and its poignant
ending when the once-blind girl recognizes The Tramp as her benefactor. The
dramatic moments that make his comedies so memorable come from the same place
that created this undervalued film.
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