Innocents of Paris (1929)

Directed by

Richard Wallace

Genre

musical film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 18m

Rating

8.0 of 10 from 1 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A young man from the streets of Paris gets involved in a musical adventure. The film follows his interactions with local characters as he pursues romance and a better life.

old-fashionedlightheartedmusicalromanticoptimisticwhimsicalnostalgicmelodic

What happens

Innocents of Paris is a 1929 black and white American musical film. Directed by Richard Wallace and based on the play Flea Market, the film was the first musical production by Paramount Pictures. Although the screenplay was regarded as mediocre, the critics were impressed with the newly arrived Chevalier, for whom they predicted much success. At the preview in Los Angeles, established film-actor Adolphe Menjou, son of French immigrant parents, congratulated Chevalier in person. The film used the somewhat new technology of sound with the Western Electric sound system. Dubbing was not a common practice, but the film makers attempted it here over stock footage of Paris. An orchestra played "Louise" under one microphone while several actors spoke street observations under another, like "What pretty flowers!", and a group of three men whistled bird calls into a third microphone. Several takes were required to get the mixing right, but what resulted was an early example of sound dubbing. A novelisation of the film, written by C.E. Andrews, was published by The Readers Library to coincide with the film's release and included 8 pages of stills (it was titled The Innocents of Paris). (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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