Parisian Love

From the cafes of Montmartre to the lush interiors of the Hotel Ritz, Clara Bow reigns supreme in Parisian Love. A playful gamin with “It” aplenty, Marie (Bow) is a wily “Apache” dancer who thrives off the American tourists slumming in Paris’s seedy districts. When her lover Armand (Donald Keith) is shot during a robbery, Marie vows revenge upon the wealthy culprit: Pierre Marcel (Lou Tellegen). With the help of a comical underworld matriach (Lillian Leighton) and a sinister band of thieves, Marie trades in her wool cap and ragged trousers for ermine and lace in an elaborate plot to seduce Marcel.

Whether garbed as a boy of the street, dolled up as a French maid, dressed as a prim convent girl or gowned in the finery of the Champs-Élysées, Bow casts a hypnotic spell upon the viewer and displays the wit, beauty, charm and expressiveness that made her the box-office queen of the latter-day silents.

This Kino on Video edition was mastered from the sole surviving print of Parisian Love. For decades considered a “lost” film, the print surfaced at the 1998 Pordenone Silent Film Festival. –KINO