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Charlie Chaplin's first attempt to direct a serious film
I would say that "A Woman of Paris" is Charlie Chaplin's answer to Woody Allen's "Interiors," except that Allen was not even born when Chaplin directed this 1923 film. This was Chaplin's first production for United Artists and the comedian only appears in an unrecognizable cameo as a porter lugging a trunk. The star is Edna Purviance, who made almost forty films with the comedian from 1915 to 1926 as his leadin lady. With this dramatic effort he was trying to make her a bankable star independent of his comedies. <
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>"A Woman of Paris" (Released September 26, 1923) is the story of Marie St. Clair (Purviance), a girl from a small French town who plans on eloping to Paris with her lover, Jean (Carl Miller), a would-be artist. Her father disapproves and when Jean leaves her at the train station, Marie ends up in Paris by herself and becomes the mistress of the wealthy Pierre Revel (Adolphe Menjou). In time, Marie runs into Jean again, and is forced to choose between money and love. The fact that there is sin on the one side and the sanctity of marriage comes into play because "A Woman of Paris" is ultimately pure melodrama, beautifully photographed by Roland Totheroh. <
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>Audiences in 1923, of course, were disappointed to find that Chaplin had produced a film that was not a comedy, although there are a couple of decent comic sequences. The film was quickly pulled from release and while it did nothing for Purviance's career, although she turned in what is arguably the most memorable and effective performance of her film career, it did boost that of Menjou. Yes, "A Woman of Paris" suffers in comparison to Chaplin's other films, but as a period melodrama it is certainly above average. The film was not the biggest failure of Chaplin's career; that would be "A Woman of the Sea" (a.k.a. "Sea Gulls") another film featuring Purviance, which he produced but did not direct in 1926. When that film bombed, Chaplin destroyed the negatives. Chaplin was obviously bothered by the response to "A Woman of Paris," re-editing it and composing a new score for the film in the 1970s that was not released until after his death.