So this is Paris, at least as Hollywood perceived it

It's been a while since I've done a post on a silent feature, and I saw that I had a couple I had to watch off my DVR before they expired. So with that in mind, I watched the Ernst Lubitsch film So This is Paris and then wrote up and scheduled this post, which to be honest is only going to show up on the blog after the movie has expired from the DVR. But it's in the public domain, so you may be able to find copies on your favorite video platform if the music doesn't fall afoul of copyright issues.

Maurice Lallé (Andre Beranger) is doing a dance for his wife Georgette (Lilyan Tashman) in their Paris apartment, the reason being that the pair are actually professional dancers and this is rehearsal for their latest number, which would also explain why Maurice is dressed up (or down, if you will) as a sheik and there's a piano accompanist with them. Eventually, the camera pans out and through a window, and the action moves across the street.

Suzanne Giraud (Patsy Ruth Miller) is the sort of idle rich housewife who, as the intertitles tell us, read a certain type of hot but trashy novel while their husbands are away at work. In fact, Suzanne is just finishing up another such novel about a sheik when she looks through the window, and sees... a shirtless Maurice! But then her husband, a doctor named Paul (Monte Blue) returns home. He sees Suzanne acting strangely, and even calling him her sheik. It's only when he looks through the window and sees a still-shirtless Maurice sitting by the window that he begins to put two and two together.

Suzanne tells her husband to go over there and "demand satisfaction", although it's an excuse for her to keep looking through the window. He knocks on the door and is admitted into the apartment, at which point Georgette shows up to see who the guest is. Imagine everybody's surprise when it's revealed that Georgette and Paul have a past together from before they each married other people. And Suzanne can look through the window and see what may or may not be going on with Paul, Georgette, and Maurice. Paul, realizing this, tries to make it look like he's getting in a fight with Maurice, when in reality they're all being friendly.

Paul returns home, not realizing that he left his cane over at the Lallés' apartment. So naturally Maurice decides he's going to be a decent person about it and return the cane. Maurice acts way too nice to Suzanne, which confuses her, since she expected Paul to treat Maurice in such a way that he wouldn't want to have anything to do with either her or Paul ever again. Maurice flirts with Suzanne while Paul is ostensibly asleep in the other room. But he can hear everything that's going on.

So everybody has reason to try to get revenge on everybody else, starting with Georgette requesting the doctor come over, when in fact she's at a café. Paul races over, but gets stopped for speeding, at which point the first of many complications ensues.

I don't know if Paris was ever like it was depicted in So This Is Paris. Maybe it was among a certain social class, although it's the same social class that's depicted in a lot of Hollywood screwball comedies of the 1930s. The material here is pleasant enough, although to be honest it's the sort of stuff that would probably work better in a sound movie than a silent. Still, if you haven't seen it before, So This Is Paris is definitely worth watching at least once.