This is the first feature made by Charles Chaplin for the recently formed United Artists and took everyone by surprise as he was not exactly renowned for his romantic sophistication. If, as has been suggested, the character of Pierre Revel is a self portrait of Chaplin himself, then it is just as well that the immaculate Adolphe Menjou played the role!
A year earlier Chaplin had enjoyed a brief liaison with notorious gold-digger Peggy Hopkins Joyce who regaled him with tales of her romantic adventures and boasted that a young man had killed himself for love of her. This formed the basis for his screenplay in which the Marie of Edna Purviance is torn between the insouciant womaniser played by Menjou and charmless Carl Miller as a melancholy painter.
It was hoped that this film would establish Miss Purviance as a dramatic actress but such was not to be the case whilst Menjou's growing reputation was further enhanced. There is excellent support by Betty Morrissey and Malvina Polo as a couple of glamorous feather-brains and Lydia Knott as Jean's mother whilst an uncredited Nellie Bly Baker does a marvellous turn as a poker faced masseuse.
Chaplin's direction here is faultless and one is struck by the naturalness of the acting. What was for the time a rather risqué party scene is brilliantly handled and the final scene of Pierre's luxury car passing Marie on a hay cart is worthy of a Lubitsch.
One of United Artists' founder members Mary Pickford commented on the film, "Oh, how well Chaplin knows women." Something of an understatement.
A year earlier Chaplin had enjoyed a brief liaison with notorious gold-digger Peggy Hopkins Joyce who regaled him with tales of her romantic adventures and boasted that a young man had killed himself for love of her. This formed the basis for his screenplay in which the Marie of Edna Purviance is torn between the insouciant womaniser played by Menjou and charmless Carl Miller as a melancholy painter.
It was hoped that this film would establish Miss Purviance as a dramatic actress but such was not to be the case whilst Menjou's growing reputation was further enhanced. There is excellent support by Betty Morrissey and Malvina Polo as a couple of glamorous feather-brains and Lydia Knott as Jean's mother whilst an uncredited Nellie Bly Baker does a marvellous turn as a poker faced masseuse.
Chaplin's direction here is faultless and one is struck by the naturalness of the acting. What was for the time a rather risqué party scene is brilliantly handled and the final scene of Pierre's luxury car passing Marie on a hay cart is worthy of a Lubitsch.
One of United Artists' founder members Mary Pickford commented on the film, "Oh, how well Chaplin knows women." Something of an understatement.