Paris is a 1929 American Pre-Codemusical comedy film, featuring Irène Bordoni. It was filmed with Technicolor sequences: four of the film's ten reels were originally photographed in Technicolor. Paris was the fourth color film released by Warner Bros.; the first three were The Desert Song, On with the Show and Gold Diggers of Broadway, all released in 1929.. The film was adapted from the Cole PorterBroadway musical of the same name. The musical was Porter's first Broadway hit. No film elements of Paris are known to exist, although the complete soundtrack survives on Vitaphone disks. The sound tape reels for this film survives at UCLA Film and Television Archive. Paris was the fourth film Warner Brothers had made with their Technicolor contract. The filmmakers used a color process of red and green, at the time it was the third process of Technicolor.
Plot
Irène Bordoni is cast as Vivienne Rolland, a Parisian chorus girlin love with Massachusetts boy Andrew Sabbot Andrew's snobbish mother Cora tries to break up the romance. Jack Buchanan likewise makes his talking-picture debut as Guy Pennell, the leading man in Vivienne's revue.
Cast
Irène Bordoni as Vivienne Rolland
Jack Buchanan as Guy Pennell
Louise Closser Hale as Cora Sabbot
Jason Robards as Andrew Sabbot
ZaSu Pitts as Harriet
Margaret Fielding as Brenda Kaley
Production
Warner Bros. paid the celebrated French music hall star and Broadway chanteuse Irene Bordoni $10,000 a week to star in this film, playing the role she had originated on Broadway, introducing the enduring Porter standard "Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love". While this film was being shot, the studio was in the process of completing their all-star revue The Show of Shows, so they had Bordoni film a number for the revue. Their initial intention was to have Bordoni star in two musical features, but due to the poor box-office reception of Paris, they decided not to make any more films with her.
Songs
Advertisement
Paris utilized advertisements of a type which were common for its time, featuring the talking in the film and Irène Bordoni starring. One ad for Paris said "See the talking picture of the future".
Preservation
No film elements of Paris are known to exist, although the complete soundtrack survives on Vitaphone disks. The sound tape reels for this film survives at UCLA Film and Television Archive. According to the George Eastman Museum 2015 Book "The Dawn of Technicolor, 1915-1935" there are three fragments at the Seaver Center. In April 2018 British Film Institute discovered the 1 minute Technicolor fragment which is included on the YouTube video.
Box office
According to Warner Bros records the film earned $632,000 domestically and $541,000 foreign.
