A Woman of the World
About A Woman of the World
Countess Elnora Natatorini leaves France after a faithless lover and stays with her cousin Sam Poore and his wife Lou in a Midwestern town. District attorney Richard Granger, a reformer, sees her smoke in public and is both shocked and drawn to her. At a community meeting the town sells the right to talk to a countess for a quarter. An old man offers another quarter to see the tattoo her lover left. Sam shows her his own tattoo, a train running across his chest, and she laughs. Granger, jealous of his assistant Gareth Johns, denounces her and orders her out of town. She horsewhips him with a whip borrowed from Lou. When she draws blood she drops the whip. They leave together in a hack for the train, and he offers her the cigarettes he had condemned.
Cast & crew
More about A Woman of the World
Malcolm St. Clair directed. Pierre Collings wrote the screenplay from Carl Van Vechten's 1924 novel The Tattooed Countess. Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky produced it for Famous Players-Lasky. Bert Glennon photographed it. Paramount released it on 28 December 1925, after a New York opening the week of 14 December. Alternate titles are The Mysterious Woman and The Tattooed Countess. Pola Negri plays the countess. A listed running time is 70 minutes. The Wikipedia infobox gives 79.
Themes
Making
St. Clair plays the European countess against a church bazaar and a reforming district attorney. The whip comes from Lou, not from the countess's luggage.
Look
Bert Glennon photographed Negri in the small-town rooms and at the meeting where the town charges a quarter to speak to her.
Music
Silent, with English intertitles.
Preservation
A print survives.
Notes
- The tattoo the old man wants to see is the mark of the lover she came to forget.
- Sam Poore's tattoo is a railroad train from his right wrist across his chest to his left hand.
- Holmes Herbert, Charles Emmett Mack, Blanche Mehaffey, Chester Conklin, Lucille Ward, Dot Farley, and Guy Oliver are in the cast.
- A film-magazine review of the period supplies the cigarette, the quarter-a-head meeting, and the hack to the station.
- AFI's shorter synopsis stops at the horsewhip and the embrace and does not mention the train.
Scenes
- An old man offers an extra quarter to see the countess's tattoo.
- Sam shows her the train tattooed across his chest.
- She horsewhips Granger, drops the whip, and they leave for the station with his cigarettes.
Influenced by
- Carl Van Vechten's The Tattooed Countess (1924)
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-a-woman-of-the-world)
