The Chaplin Touch… A Woman of Paris (1923), BFI with Mark Fuller, Cinema Unbound

Hollywood had been taught a new and sophisticated attitude to sexual relations by, of all people, Charlie Chaplin in a Woman of Paris…

Michael Powell, A Life in Movies

 

There was a moment when Edna Purviance’s character Marie St Clair, is being visited by her former love Jean Millet (Carl Miller) to discuss his painting her portrait. She’s seemingly done well for herself but as one of her maids opens a draw to fold away her washing, a man’s shirt cuff falls to the floor and catches the eye of Jean who notes as does the audience, the significance of such familiarity with a man’s wardrobe. It’s the economy of the moment and Chaplin’s cinematic intelligence that catches our attention now as we sit and do the maths for subsequent releases such as Lubitsch’s The Marriage Circle (1924) or Three Women (1924) and Monte Bell’s Lady of the Night (1925).

But we weren’t here to discuss the influence of Chaplin on his contemporaries but the impact of this film on an 18-year-old Michael Powell who at this point was just a regular cinema- loving bank clerk based in respectable Ringwood, Hampshire as Archers expert Mark Fuller explained in his informed introduction. I would say that Mark has forgotten more about Powell and Pressburger than most remember if not for the fact that I don’t think he forgets any details of these two. His diligence and thirst for knowledge led him to the rediscovery of Smith (1939) a short film Powell made to promote the Embankment Fellowship Centre with Ralph Richardson (and Wally Patch!).

"... using objects for their metaphoric and metonymic value..."*

Years later, interviewed by Kevin Brownlow in an unpublished article for Time Out, Powell recalled how he was collecting everything in a “romantic sort of way… and I looked on films the way that people did then, as a wonderful new plaything, but not serious…”. Then he saw A Woman of Paris, in either the Boscombe Hippodrome of Boscombe Cinema near Bournemouth, and “I was absolutely knocked by it, because suddenly the whole medium grew up.”

For Powell, Chaplin a clown with “all the power in the world”, had not only made a “grown-up” film, he’d done it out of pure love and loyalty for his long-time on-screen partner Edna Purviance, who was given the prominence you would expect of an Italian diva or a Pickford, Gish or Talmadge in a project with something of his innocence but also sense of tragedy based on the worldview you could expect of a man who grew up in the poorhouse. Charlie and Edna had also been romantic partners until his marriage to Mildred Harris but they remained firm friends and he supported her throughout her life.

The film was not a smash hit – perhaps Powell suggested, it was not just realistic but too realistic – but he felt more modern viewers should be made aware of it and the influence it had on the cinematic language of the twenties and beyond. Modesty would have forbidden but we certainly watched this film with fresh eyes after learning of its impact on Powell himself. Props to the BFI for including it in the Cinema Unbound programme and to bringing in Mr Fuller to explain the connection.

Adolphe Menjou and Edna Purviance

Charlie Chaplin not only wrote, produced and directed the film by 1976, he had even written the music for it which today we heard on a recording conducted by Timothy Brock. I must admit that I don’t always like Chaplin’s score but this one, possibly because if was for Edna, rang so true to the narrative and was like an audio commentary on his intent from the 87-year-old to his 34-year-old self. It was the last of his films he scored and it was to be his final completed work.

Chaplin was frustrated by the reaction to the film and it’s a shame for Edna that it didn’t raise her profile in the way it did for Adolphe Menjou who was to feature in Lubitsch’s The Marriage Circle and many more. Edna is superb though and in addition to wearing some fabulous costumes that would have graced a Borelli or a Boardman, gives such a nuanced and commanding dramatic performance. Her timing is, of course, perfect and whilst Chaplin’s comedies had always required dramatic chops, here she’s inverted her usual performance with some controlled comedic touches mixed with a dominant and thoroughly convincing lead performance as a woman torn between two lives and loves.

There are Germanic touches in the sets and lighting and the film feels almost more European than American but what would you expect from a boy from Kennington. But the themes and the timing – sometimes comic and otherwise tragic – are all his own.

Edna looks nervously towards the future

The film opens with a bravura shot of a small house in a French village with the enclosing camera gradually revealing the figure of a young woman staring with concern from her bedroom window. The young woman, Marie St Clair (Purviance) nervously packs her bags in her room and as her father creeps up the stairs and locks her door, Chaplin gradually reveals the scenario: an elopement is being planned and both sets of parents disagree.

Marie’s lover Jean Millet (Carl Miller) helps her climb down from outside her room and they walk to his house where an equally frosty reception awaits. What has caused this parental disapproval is not made clear but it’s deep-seated. Refused entry back home, the couple head for the station to catch a train to Paris: their city of hope. Jean leaves Marie to go and collect his things but, tragedy strikes when his father has a heart attack and dies. A fateful miss-communication then occurs as the lovers telephone each other and Marie, thinking than Jean has just got cold feet, heads off to Paris alone.

A year later she seems to have found her feet exceptionally well, being the kept woman of Pierre Revel (Menjou), “the most eligible bachelor in Paris”, living in luxury and spending her time socialising or being prepared for the next occasion along with her proto-flapper buddies Fifi (Betty Morrissey) and Paulette (Malvina Polo). Everything is well except for the fact that Pierre is planning to marry the wealthiest spinster in Paris. The story is revealed in the papers but Marie doesn’t know until her helpful friends show her, she hides her disappointment well: she’s learned a great deal of city ways. Pierre tells her that it won’t change their relationship but she’s not convinced.

Parisians un-winding...

She sulks and stays in whilst her friends head off to an outrageous party in the Latin Quarter… Chaplin gives a good party and clearly enjoys showing the risqué side of life as the drunken debauch is topped off by an elegant striptease in which a young woman (Bess Flowers - sometimes dubbed the Queen of the Hollywood Extras) is gradually revealed to the on-screen audience as a white sheet is slowly unwrapped: glasses and monocles are raised even by the women and a drunken man faints in dis-belief.

Fifi tells Maria she can’t miss out and she heads over only to open the door to the wrong address, a small apartment home to a struggling artist: it’s Jean. So, chance has re-united them and whilst their guards are now up, Marie invites Jean to paint her. As Jean arrives wide-eyed at her opulent home Marie finds out with a shock the reason for his none-appearance and her sympathy shifts back but there can be no simple reconciliation especially when Marie sneaks at peek at her portrait and, rather than paint her in the stunning satin gown she has chosen, Jean depicts her as she was when he left her. This can’t be healthy and it’s a very neat touch from the director.

Carl Miller

But as romance is re-kindled, parental dissatisfaction again plays a part as Jean’s mother – disapproving of Marie’s lifestyle – makes him promise not to marry her and he agrees only for Marie to overhear at the door… The course of true love never runs smooth and in real life second chances are few yet Chaplin’s players are compelled to try and there’s a very elegant mess building that he plays out as well as in any of his comedies. The relationship between Marie and Pierre is especially well handled, so many then transgressive aspects left unsaid but the full meaning conferred perfectly by these two wonderful players.

Ultimately the film stands as testimony to Chaplin’s enduring qualities as an instinctive and innovative filmmaker as well as to his loyalty and influence. It should also ensure that Edna Purviance’s reputation remains as simply one of the finest screen actors of the period: not just a "straight guy" or a foil but the emotional foundation on which he built some of his finest work. As for Mr Powell, we can see the inspiration he took from this work and the role Chaplin had in inspiring his fellow Englishman: a daisy chain of genius.

Powell loved this simple intertitle as Pierre laughs at Marie's frustration: a perfect moment...

Edna abides...

*Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema (2003), Jeffrey Vance,  New York: Harry N. Abrams.