A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate

Finally saw Woman of Paris: this was a legendary film in its day, but mostly because it was virtually never re-released for sixty years after it premiered in 1923, so the legend grew in its absence. The parts of the story that were not told would have made a better movie than the movie, for example why the lovers' fathers at the beginning of the film are against the marriage, and how Marie (Edna Purviance) became a (shudder) "Woman of Paris" during the year following her departure from her fiance. So I didn't buy the story but the camera work and editing do marvelous things with the story that is there. The melodramatic climax is a bit much to be believed, but not comical as a lot of silent mellers appear today. A little D.W. Griffith (sophisticated early use of photography to tell story and set mood), a little Tolstoy ("bad woman" story contrasted with storyteller's emphasis on happy marriages and wholesome family life), a touch of Dreiser ("sinful" characters shown with realistic insight) and I'd guess a soupcon of Terrence Ratigan (sophisticated attitudes) but I doubt he was around then. The ad copy for this film says Chaplin has a cameo as a railway porter but I didn't notice one in the train scene: I suspect instead he was the ticket agent whose hand appears pointing out the ticket window toward the train. Altogether a satisfying and entertaining film, but the story would have been better if Chaplin had worked on it a little longer.