Constance Talmadge as Lola la Perry
‘You beast, I hate you! I’m going back to mother.’
In 'Her Sister From Paris', from 1925, the famous writer Joseph Weyringer (Ronald Colman) has lost his interest in his wife Helen. She knows only one solution; during one of the many quarrels she shouts; 'I'm going back to mother'. Just like in the Danish film 'Master of the House', which was made in the same year as this film, she thinks that he’ll be begging for her to return to hem when he has to take care of himself for a while. But on the way to mother, this story goes in a completely different direction. She meets her sister at the station. Her twin sister; the famous dancer Lola la Perry.
Constance Talmadge as Lola la Perry en Helen Weyringer
When Helen pours her heart out to her sister, her sister she knows exactly who’s fault it is; It is always the fault of the woman if her husband loses interest in her. Nice to have such a sister. ‘You’re hopelessly old-fashioned’, she also adds subtly. But Lola knows exactly how she can help her sister. So lets forgive her that she calls this ‘renovating’. Then the two do what twins are good at, but fortunately the necessary predictable embarrassing situations remain absent.
Margaret Anglin in ‘The Twin Sister’
Ludwig Fulda wrote the story for the Broadway comedy 'The Twin Sister' in 1902 and Hanns Kräly turned it into a film script. Kräly started his career as an actor and formed a few years later when he started writing scenarios a collaboration with Ernst Lubitsch. First in Germany and later in Hollywood. A few years after 'Her Sister from Paris' he would win an Oscar for best scenario and after that he would be nominated for another two Oscars.
Director Sidney Franklin would never win an Oscar, but in 1943 he received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award and in 1960 a star on the Walk of Fame. The advantage of the early period of the film is that the filmmakers were often all round. Usually they were forced to fulfill different tasks when making the films. Franklin, like Kräly, also had some acting experience. I think that for this reason this film could have turned into a comedy classic like 'The Patsy' from 1928.
Franklin knows how to get the best out of the actors and Constance Talmadge, who plays the two sisters in 'Her Sister from Paris', proves with this role to have as much comedy talent as Marion Davies in 'The Patsy'. In itself, I think the role of the man who has to learn a lesson is not that interesting, but Ronald Colman does his best to make the best of it and shows himself to be a very capable actor. Surprising element in this story is the family friend, played by George K. Arthur. This family friend ensures that we do not fall asleep when the husband makes his appearance. He knows how to use his mischievous looks and his talent for comic timing. And all this without falling into slapstick too much and without taking too much attention away from our leading lady. I am therefore somewhat surprised that his acting career ended at the age of 36. It is said that he could not make the transition to the sound film because he had a heavy accent. I myself doubt that that would have been the real reason. Marion Davies stuttered, had speech therapy and remained popular. And in fact is that it is a myth that the voice or accent ended many acting career prematurely.
Constance Talmadge as Lola la Perry en Helen Weyringer
But you just said; 'It could have been a comedy classic, a la' The Patsy '? Why didn’t it become a comedy classic in the league of ‘The Patsy’? You may wonder. I think that's because of the editing. The tempo of this film is a bit slower than that of 'The Patsy'. It is not that I think this film is boring, but I think the humor would have come across better if the editing had been a bit more uptempo. Well, now it happens that we can designate a guilty party for this. Editor Hal C. Kern has the misfortune that, unlike a lot of silent films, it is known who the editor of this film was. When he edited this film he had been in the business for 10 years and he had already edited about 8 films. He had collaborated with various renowned directors. And he had edited the first Technicolor feature film. In 1940 he won the Oscar for the editing of 'Gone with the Wind' and would later be nominated for two more Oscars. Let's say that he has more than made up for his editing for this film in my opinion. Not that I found 'Her Sister From Paris' really bad, but to me it makes the difference between perfect and almost perfect.
And the film was well received in 1925 by both the public and the press. According to the 'Moving Picture World' September / October issue, the audience almost fell out of their seats with laughter. Reviewer Sumner Smith wrote; "The action never slackens, the acting is perfect, the situations are very funny and some of the subtitles are real bits of genius." I have to admit that I am a bit fussy with my review here.
Constance Talmadge as Lola la Perry
In 1941, MGM thought it was time to repeat the success of 1925 and no one less than George Oppenheimer was asked to write a new script of Fulda's Broadway play. George Cukor was asked to direct film diva Greta Garbo in the role of twins (well, one of them). The film would linger in the collective memory as the fiasco that Garbo’s finished off her career. At that time the press wrote that seeing 'Two-Faced Woman' was something like seeing your own mother drunk at a party. In other words embarrassing. I have not seen this film, but I suspect that it’s not as bad as they wrote. MGM made twice as much money with this film in America than they had invested in it, not to mention the revenue worldwide. That is even more than the original blockbuster.
Constance Talmadge as Lola la Perry en Helen Weyringer
In the course of time numerous films about twins were made, of which I still think 'Her Sister From Paris' from 1925 is one of the better. But I have to admit that I have seen only a handful of the more than 200 film titles that can be found on the internet.
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