Charlie Chaplin's A Woman of Paris Movie Review

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.

Classic Movie Review: Charlie Chaplin's The Kid

Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid is unique among his films in that it’s the only time we see the Tramp as a family man. Normally he’s on his own and breezing through life. Occasionally there’s a girl and sometimes he even wins her in the end. But to see the Tramp with a child to care for reveals a side of the character unseen either before or after.

To be sure, the Tramp comes to fatherhood like most things in his life – unwillingly and unwittingly. At the start of the film a young woman leaves a charity hospital with baby in arms. Destitute and without means to care for the infant she leaves it in the car of a wealthy man. Regretful a short time later she returns, but the car has been stolen by two thieves who leave the baby in an alley. This series of coincidences leads to the Tramp finding the baby. He picks it up believing it belongs to a passerby. Yet one more coincidence – a passing beat cop – precludes the possibility he can put the child back in the alley. And so a father is born.

Charlie Chaplin Focus: Reviews of 4 Short Films for Mutual

These four short comedies by Chaplin are from volume 3 of a three volume set known as The Chaplin Mutuals comprising all 12 comedies he made for the Mutual company in 1916.

In Chaplin’s first short film for Mutual, The Floorwalker, he plays a customer in a retail store who becomes unwittingly mixed up in an embezzlement scheme involving the store’s manager and floorwalker. This is made possible by his uncanny resemblance to the floorwalker which provides for an oft repeated (most famously by the Marx brothers) classic bit in which Chaplin and his doppelganger (Lloyd Bacon) play like they’re each looking in a mirror at the other. What starts as another episode of the bumbling Tramp acting the fool becomes a classic mistaken identity comedy as the store manager (Eric Campbell) takes him for the man who betrayed him for the cash embezzlement. The Floorwalker is notable for being the first film to use an escalator for comedy which provides Chaplin some great physical comedy centered on one character chasing another down the ‘up’ escalator with neither of them moving anywhere. The climax features an elevator as well, the two working together to add a new level to Chaplin’s comedic work.