Woman of Paris, A (Blu-ray Review)
Director
Charlie ChaplinRelease Date(s)
1923 (March 18, 2025)Studio(s)
Charlie Chaplin Productions/Regent/United Artists (The Criterion Collection – Spine #1253)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: B+
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: A-
Review
The formation of United Artists in 1919 meant that Charlie Chaplin could finally make films outside of his normal scope. He had already become a worldwide comedy star as The Tramp and even directed many of his short films before finally directing his first full length film The Kid for Mutual Film Corporation, but he was eager to stretch his filmmaking muscles and make something completely out of his wheelhouse wherein he wasn’t the main focus. The result was 1923’s A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate, or simply A Woman of Paris, which received high critical praise but wasn’t a hit with audiences, many of whom preferred Chaplin in front of the camera instead of behind it. He would go on to make some of the most distinguished comedy films ever produced, but even so, he was particularly fond of A Woman of Paris, so much so that he would re-cut the film and add a new score for its 1976 re-release one year prior to his death.
Marie St. Clair (Edna Purviance) lives under the thumb of her overbearing father (Clarence Geldart). Hoping to escape her small village with her fiancé Jean (Carl Miller), the pair are separated when Jean’s father (Charles K. French) suddenly dies and he misses Marie at the train station where she leaves alone for Paris. One year later, Marie is living the high life with a wealthy playboy, Pierre Revel (Adolphe Menjou), when Jean, now a starving artist living with his widowed mother (Lydia Knott), comes back into her life almost by chance. She hires him to paint her portrait, but Jean is still deeply in love with Marie, and she starts to wonder if she still loves him too as she begins spending less and less time with Pierre, who’s amused by her bewilderment.
A long-respected work by many filmmakers, including Chaplin’s peers, A Woman of Paris isn’t merely a straight melodrama. Writing and producing, as well as directing, Chaplin turns the customary melodramatic tropes on their heads and gives his characters more intriguing portrayals. Marie is not necessarily good to Jean, and Jean is not merely a spurned ex-lover with a heart of gold. Pierre is also not a straight villain, nor is the film a traditional love triangle story where one man must come out victorious and win the heart of Marie. Situations also don’t play out as you might expect, at least for their time, and Marie’s ultimate fate nobody can see coming, but it gives her humanity back to her in a way that’s both somber and satisfying.
Chaplin put much of his heart and soul into the picture, capitalizing upon Edna Purviance, whom he hoped to make a star out of, but also from his past experiences with women and stories told to him about other relationships. It all informs the dramatic arc of A Woman of Paris, which today does appear as nothing more than a readily-familiar silent melodrama to some, but still pioneered many filmmaking techniques and ideas while also exploring human relationships in a more meaningful way than simply telling the story of two Shakespearean star-crossed lovers. This is no re-purposing of The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Chaplin was a better storyteller than that.
Cinematographer Roland Totheroh shot A Woman of Paris on 35mm film, the results of which were finished photochemically, and presented theatrically in the aspect ratio of 1.33:1. The Criterion Collection brings the film to Blu-ray with a 2019 4K digital restoration of a second-generation full-frame duplicate negative of the 1976 re-release version, which was carried out by MK2 and Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, in association with Roy Export S.A.S. as part of the Chaplin Project; and finally, encoded to a dual-layered BD-50 disc. Though a reconstruction of the original 1923 version would have been welcome as well (represented in the Deleted Shots section of the bonus materials), this presentation offers a lovely black-and-white picture that’s been carefully restored with only the mildest instances of jitter due to warpage of the negative. There’s also some mild speckling and lines running along the left edge of the frame, but none of it detracts from the overall quality of the picture. Though coming from a duped source, there’s lovely depth in the image with natural gradations of black and white and terrific grayscale. Bitrates sit in the 30 to 40Mbps range and despite any age-related deficiencies, it’s a remarkable-looking image.
Audio is presented in 1.0 LPCM, featuring a score composed by Charlie Chaplin himself. Included in the extras is an alternate score created in 2005 by conductor Timothy Brock presented in 2.0 LPCM, but it can only be accessed from there. Both offer lush orchestration within their respective audio containers, though the 2005 score is offered more stereo spread. Your mileage may vary.
The Criterion Collection Blu-ray release of A Woman of Paris comes with a 1080p Blu-ray, an insert with new artwork by Thomas Pittides, and a double-sided poster featuring the cover artwork on the front and information about the film on the reverse. This includes cast and crew information, the essays “Whatever Became of Marie St. Clair?” by Pamela Hutchinson, Discovering Chaplin’s Music for A Woman of Paris by Timothy Brock, presentation information, special thanks, acknowledgments, and production credits. The following extras are included on the Blu-ray:
- Introduction by David Robinson (Upscaled SD – 5:20)
- Alternate 2005 Score (HD – 89:50)
- “A Serious Drama”: Charles Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris (HD – 22:47)
- Chaplin Today: A Woman of Paris (SD – 26:31)
- Archives with Commentary: A Woman of Paris (HD – 9:16)
- Roland Totheroh (HD – 4:40)
- Deleted Shots (HD – 10 in all – 13:56)
- United Artists (HD – 3:14)
- Trailers:
- 1976 Re-Release (Upscaled SD – 2:40)
- 2023 Re-Release (HD – 1:25)
In the introduction by Chaplin scholar David Robinson, he gives a brief overview of the history of the film and how Chaplin’s life tied into it. Presented separately is the film with an alternate score conducted by Timothy Brock in 2005 with the Orchestra Città Aperta, which is based upon a selection of Chaplin’s composition sketches penned from 1952 to 1969. “A Serious Drama” is a video essay by Charlie Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance about the film. Chaplin Today: A Woman of Paris is a short documentary from 2003 that features interviews with actor Liv Ullmann and filmmaker Michael Powell speaking about the film. Archives with Commentary is a 2022 French-speaking documentary by the managing director of Roy Export S.A.S., Arnold Lozano, in which he talks about the history of A Woman of Paris while showing various photos and pieces of archival ephemera to illustrate it. Also included are three excerpts from a 1964 audio interview with cinematographer Roland Totheroh, who shot for Chaplin and spends a brief amount of time recalling his memories of the making of A Woman of Paris.
Next is a collection of ten Deleted Shots from the original 1923 version of the film that Chaplin removed for the 1976 re-release to tighten the pacing. Most are easy cuts, though a couple do flesh out certain moments a little better, such as Jean arriving home and finding a candlelit meal waiting for him by his bedside. This was originally set up by showing his mother preparing it for him, then subsequently going to bed, and showing the other characters in bed prior to Jean’s entrance, giving us a sense of where everybody was in that moment. Following that is archival footage of the founders of United Artists—Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks—re-creating their contract signing and posing for photos for the press. Last are the trailers for the 1976 and 2023 re-releases of the film.
Several items from previous releases haven’t carried over. The Warner Bros. DVD release included the shorts Paris in the 20s and Camille, as well as four photo galleries and The Chaplin Collection series of trailers. The German Region 2 DVD release from Kinowelt features the documentary Chaplin ABC and a photo gallery, while the Region B Blu-ray release in the UK from Curzon includes the Chaplin shorts Sunnyside and Pay Day, as well as a deleted scene from Sunnyside.
Though I’m personally more of a fan of Chaplin’s later works, such as The Gold Rush, The Great Dictator, and Limelight, A Woman of Paris is fascinating as we see one of the few times that an artist of his caliber was allowed to make something out of his usual milieu. Criterion’s presentation and extras package is wonderful, and in their library of Charlie Chaplin’s works, it’s another keeper. Highly recommended.
- Tim Salmons
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