A Woman of Paris (1923) review

Locked up in her bedroom by a controlling father, Marie St. Clair (Edna Purviance) plans to escape her small French village and run off with her artist boyfriend Jean Millet (Carl Miller) but things don't work out - a year later, she's in Paris and in some sort of relationship with rich (and immoral) bachelor Pierre Revel (Adolphe Menjou) and then Jean reappears in her life in order to paint her portrait.  As Chaplin's second full-length feature, he not only doesn't have a role (although he does have a cameo as a porter) but admits he's attempting to make a "serious drama," except it's filled with terribly vacuous individuals who do nothing but eat expensive meals and dance all night, and its sole semi-redeemable figure, Jean, has a busy-body mother, a recently deceased dad and then commits suicide with a pistol.  Sir Charles might have been trying a bit too hard to break away from his reputation as a "comedic filmmaker and actor" - a problem Woody Allen ran into in his own career - and it's a strain: having grown up in extreme poverty, it's clear he holds the "wealthy elite" in total contempt, which doesn't help the movie in the slightest.