A Gentleman of Paris

There's nothing particularly wrong with this movie, I suppose. But if you've seen Charlie Chaplin's directorial debut, A Woman of Paris, which came out in 1923, four years before this movie, it makes A Gentleman of Paris look pretty pale in comparison.

In both cases, Adolph Menjou plays a Paris nobleman with an active libido who is about to marry but is not keen on abandoning his mistress - and, in this case, miscellaneous other girl friends - just because of that. Chaplin spent a lot of time developing the social milieu that could tolerate such immorality. This movie never examines the culture that produced Menjou's character.

Here, instead, the tension, to the extent that there is any, arises when the Marquis, without knowing it, has an affair with a woman who is actually the wife of his prized valet. (Why the valet would not have mentioned having a wife we never find out.) The valet wants to take revenge, and that motivates the second half of the movie. We don't really care, though, as we are never made to feel his pain. After all, the Baron had not known the woman was his wife, so....

There's nothing outstanding here. Menjou is much better playing basically the same character in Chaplin's movie, no doubt because he got better direction, and because the script/scenario was much more interesting.