“It’s
always fair weather when good liars get together.”
Whenever I think of Paris in the 1920s I think of a few
things: Surrealism, Ernest Hemingway, jazz, and booze. If it is anything like
what literature and the movies portray sign me up for time travel! I probably
sound like every other girl or person out there who has romantic dreams of what
Paris was like in the 1920s. I like to study Surrealist photography from the
1920s which included Man Ray and Salvador Dali so I have learned some very interesting
things about their lives during that time and somewhat of what Paris was like. It
always seems like Paris was one continuous care-free party after another. I am
sure it was if you had money or came from money or just wasted your money.
I also like to imagine what it must have been like to be
a wife of a wealthy man back then. Since I would most likely not have been the
partying type I like to think I would have been a great patron of the arts and
my collection would have consisted of Monets, Picassos, Matisses, and Dalis.
Maybe even some great works by nineteenth century artists (I have a degree in
Art History mid-late nineteenth century European art is my favorite). But, on
the other hand, I would like to think I would be a party animal with or without
my husband going out to clubs dancing and drinking until all hours of the morning.
But in today’s world I am not much of a party animal so I am sure I would have
been the type of girl who dreams about being a party animal much like I do now
(I have friends and cousins who are very social and go out and my current
idols/obsessions are Grace Helbig, Mamrie Hart, and Hannah Hart who all like to
drink. I guess I live vicariously through all of them…. For now. It takes money
to go out, people, and I do not have that or the alcohol tolerance
unfortunately).
What old films have taught me over and over is that when
a woman or man is rich they get bored. And when they become bored with their
lives they seek out adventure and lust. That is something I would never want to
happen to me if I was in Paris in the 1920s or any other time before World War
II. It does happen to the four main characters in the silent Ernst Lubitsch
film So This is Paris.
Georgette and her husband Maurice are dancers. They had
been practicing an Arabian style dance when they decided to take a rest. Maurice
took his rest in a chair by the window. Across the way in another building,
Suzanne Giraud had just finished reading her book about a sheik. She looks out
her window and sees Maurice sitting across the way without his shirt on.
Suzanne is appalled. When her husband Paul comes home she demands him to go
have a talk with the man to tell him to put his shirt on.
With hat and cane Paul walks over the other building.
When he is introduced to Georgette they know each other. The old friends share
some wild stories with each other. Paul is standing with his back to the window
where his wife can see him and he is laughing. To his wife across the way it
looks as though Paul is having a fight with Maurice. When he goes home Paul
pretends to look miserable because of his fight and wants to be alone. He tells
Suzanne he smashed Maurice to bits with his cane. Maurice brings Paul cane over
since he left it at his house. While Paul stays in his room too afraid to come
out, Maurice kisses Suzanne. He wants to see her again.
The following day, Georgette calls from a payphone to
Paul’s house pretending she needs Paul, a doctor, to tend to her sick husband.
Suzanne tells him about the call and where to go. Paul speeds away into town.
On his way to the hotel he gets pulled over. He tells the officer that he is a
doctor but he cannot prove that because he forgot his papers. The officer
follows him to the hotel where he sees Paul hugging Georgette and laughing. The
officer becomes upset and writes Paul a ticket. Paul yells at him and causes
the officer to become even more upset and writes a ticket for Paul to show up
for jail time.
Suzanne cannot believe that Paul was given a ticket and
has to report for jail time. She tries to call the house with the name of the
patient Paul had said he was tending to. When Suzanne dials the number of the
name in the phone books a woman answers and says her husband died. Instead of
looking worried or upset Paul looks relived. He races out of the house across
the street to Georgette and tells her he wants to go get a drink to celebrate
the poor man’s death.
Paul has to report for jail but instead he goes out to an
Artist’s Ball with Georgette. He dresses up in his finest suit which confuses
Suzanne. He reassures his wife he is wearing his suit because he is a genius
and no one else will be wearing one. Across the way, Maurice pretends to be
sick so he can go and see Suzanne.
Later that night a detective comes looking for Paul
because he did not report to jail. So as not to cause a scandal Suzanne nudges
Maurice to go with the detective pretending to be Paul. When the detective and
Maurice leave Suzanne puts a radio program on that is broadcasting from the
Artist’s Ball. Paul and Georgette are announced the winners of a competition.
Suzanne is furious she gets dressed up to go to the party to retrieve. When
they come home Suzanne belittles her husband telling him she got him a pardon
from jail and that she will be handling everything in the house from now on.
Maurice is put in jail for Paul’s crimes. He writes to
Georgette that the doctor has ordered him to go to a sanatorium for his health.
In the papers the morning after the party, Paul and Suzanne read that he was
arrested and as he was being arrested Suzanne cried for him. Paul just starts
laughing at how no one should ever trust what they read in the papers.
So This is Paris
was alright. It was not what I was expecting. I was hoping it would be a crazy
non-stop party type of film set in Paris. I was not crazy about the whole
husbands and wives cheating storyline but at times it was funny. I watched the
film to see Myrna Loy. She played a maid and I must have completely missed her
very small part because I do not recall seeing her. Ernst Lubitsch is a genius.
His direction adds so much to the characters and the stories of his films. If Lubitsch
had no made So This is Paris, to me,
it would have bombed.
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