A Woman of Paris : Charlie Chaplin

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If I were the scriptwriter of Charlie Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris (1923), I would have been made an addition as its intertitle, 'a picture of love - and perhaps, of separation, or a story of forgetting – and perhaps, of remembering”, with my yearning heart of nostalgia for The Kid (1921). I think it will be a perfect impersonation and a successful mimic of Charlie’s own intertitle: “A picture with a smile — and perhaps, a tear.” The imitations of realities are the utmost purpose Chaplin was after all of his life. Is there any other movie maker who could go half way through Charlie went.

 

After knowing Charlie’s audition process and imitation techniques during rehearsal, I have got an ignition of doing acting, broadly speaking, of mimicking everything around me. I have got a bit nostalgic recalling some fragments from my childhood. After watching each movie on Friday once a month or hearing the trailer from the radio, I would take make-up from my sister’s make up kit and make costumes according to the characters both male or female or child and start to act when I would go to bed and put the lights off. I would control my voice as low as possible, even make whispers as the sound could wake up my siblings sleeping beside me. I am in total nostalgia.

 

 

The narrative structure of A Woman of  A Woman of Paris is a universal one as the same format was being used as a model widely in Indian cinema and it is still a popular screenplay edifice in Bangladesh commercial romantic drama. A beautiful girl, Marie St. Clair (Edna Purviance), is in love with an ideal bachelor, Jean Millet (Carl Miller). But their families are strictly against their romance and marriage. They try to elope to the city for a better and free life. Then they will be separated and live a luxurious life with or without any antagonist Pierre Revel (Adolphe Menjou) and the new clash will occur. In the end one of them will die if it is a tragedy or will be in a reunion if it is a romance.

 

 I find a sense of Damien Chazelle's Babylon (2022) in the A women of Paris (1923). The lavish life and its moral contradictory impulses can push one's life beyond one's control and free will. On the other note, one can take the maximum attempt to catch one's purpose in life risking everything one has.

 

As The Kid was based on Chaplin's own life as interesting as The Women of Paris was inspired by the other's lives. And the lives of women are Edna Purviance (a lifelong friend & a companion actress of Chaplin’s 35+ films) Peggy Hopkins Joyce (an American Courtesan) and Pola Negri (Polish actress). I watched Srijit Mukherji’s Shah Jahan Regency (2019) loosely based on Shankar’s Chowringhee (1962), and found a resemblance between Marie and Kamalini, a courtesan who also went through a heavy psychological tension between love and luxury.

 

 

It's a great deviation for Chaplin from his cinematic ventures and journey. This was the first film he didn't take a part in. The movie was a masterpiece for another unique way that is Chaplin had improvised its musical score at the age 86. He worked on it as his last cinematic creativity and artistic perfection in the studio. It’s a rare thing in film history after all.

 

 

 

A Woman of Paris (1923)

Charlie Chaplin

English, USA

 

 

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