Film Review
Charles Chaplin's first serious drama - and only his second
feature-length film after
The Kid (1921) -
was not only a watershed in the
career of Chaplin, but also a significant milestone in the development
of cinema.
A Woman of
Paris is arguably the first realist drama, where all of the main
characters are played in a naturalistic way, rather than in the
stylised expressionistic manner which characterised virtually all
earlier films. Significantly, this was the first film which
Chaplin directed in which he himself did not have a credited role,
although he makes a brief cameo appearance as a station porter.
Chaplin's inspiration for the film was Peggy Hopkins Joyce, a
well-known adventurer who made a career of marrying millionaires for
their money and divorcing them soon afterwards. Chaplin was to
have been Joyce's sixth victim, but the actor-director failed to
succumb and instead he made Joyce the central character in
A Woman of Paris. That
character was played by Chaplin's leading lady and onetime lover Edna
Purviance, the star of many of his previous films. At the time of
making this film, Chaplin was pursuing a very public love affair with
the actress Pola Negri, and the highs and lows of this relationship are
believed to have greatly influenced this film. Typically for
Chaplin at this time, there was no script for this film and scenes were shot
in the order in which they occur in the final film, an approach that
would be unthinkable today, for cost reasons.
A Woman of Paris is a
considerably more sophisticated film than was commonplace at the
time. The characters are far from being the stock stereotypes,
but complex, well-rounded individuals that constantly challenged
audience expectations. There are no obvious heroes or villains in
this film. The three main characters are a prostitute who is
flawed but not unsympathetic, an artist who is passionate but
weak-willed and a Lothario who is both cynical and charming. Each
character shows his or her emotions and motivations in a subtle manner
and frequently takes us by surprise, as they might do in real
life. With this film, Chaplin effectively invented the modern
film drama, imitating life as closely as possible rather than merely
providing a crude stylised representation of it.
Although critical reaction to the film was generally very positive, it
was not appreciated by the cinema-going public and proved to be a major
financial disaster. Audiences were clearly not motivated to watch
a Chaplin film without Chaplin in it and it did not help that several
states in the US banned the film for its perceived
immorality. This outcome was not what Chaplin had expected
and it would prevent him from taking similar risks in future.
Although Chaplin was himself personally very fond of the film, it was
not shown again until fifty years after its first release. In
1976, it was re-released with a new score which Chaplin himself
composed, the last piece of work he completed before his death.
Today,
A Woman of Paris is
widely regarded as one of the director's great achievements and ranks
alongside some of his subsequent, more popular masterpieces
(
City Lights (1931),
Modern Times (1936),
The Great Dictator (1940))
as an essential piece of film history.
© James Travers 2009
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.
Next Charles Chaplin film:
The Gold Rush (1925)
Film Synopsis
Marie St Clair and her lover Jean Millet plan to leave their French
village and start a new life in Paris as man and wife. On the eve
of their departure, Marie is locked out of her house by her cruel
stepfather and Jean tries to persuade his parents to let her spend the
night in their house. Knowing that Marie is a woman of ill
repute, Jean's father refuses and so Jean and Marie decide to elope to
Paris that night. When Jean is prevented from leaving by the
sudden collapse of his father, Marie makes the journey alone. A
year later, Marie lives a life of unbridled luxury as the mistress to
successful businessman Pierre Revel. She is upset when she learns
that her sugar daddy intends to marry a wealthy heiress, and is not
cheered when he says he still intends to keep her as his
mistress. One evening, Marie is invited to a party in the Latin
Quarter but, having mistaken the address, she finds herself in the
apartment belonging to her former lover Jean. Seeing that Jean is
now a successful painter, Marie asks him to paint her portrait.
Jean is still deeply in love with Marie and cannot give her up, even
though he is appalled when he learns that she is a kept woman...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.