A Woman of the Sea

Joan (Purviance) and Magdalen (Sothern) are the daughters of a fisherman in Monterey. Magdalen is engaged to Peter (Bloomer), a lowly fisher, until a writer (Whitman) comes to town. Both Joan and Magdalen fancy the writer, but Magdalen wins him over in the end and he takes her back to the big city. Joan and Peter then marry and stay in Monterey.[2] Many years later, Magdalen returns and attempts to break up her sister's marriage, only to fail.[3]

The film was in production for about six months, mainly in the Los Angeles area, including indoor scenes at Chaplin's studio. During a twelve-day period, outdoor scenes were filmed on location in the Monterey and Carmel coastal area in California. Principal photography began in January and concluded on June 2, 1926.[3] Post-production lasted for three weeks, with the final film being seven reels long with 160 intertitles.[9] The entire production cost $90,000 to make.[10]

Chaplin produced the film as a starring vehicle for his former leading lady Purviance, and to help establish Von Sternberg, whose 1924 experimental film The Salvation Hunters had greatly impressed Chaplin.[11] This was the only time Chaplin produced a film in which he neither starred nor directed.[12] His involvement in the production was minimal, as he was concurrently working on his problem-plagued film The Circus (released 1928).[13] This was Purviance's final American film, followed by a French feature film, Education of a Prince (1927), after which she retired from movies.

Von Sternberg held a preview in Beverly Hills in early July 1926 against Chaplin's wishes.[7] The general impression from the few that saw it was that it was a beautiful film, but with little substance. John Grierson called the film "extraordinarily beautiful- but empty."[14] Von Sternberg's secret screening, the lack of a plot and Purviance's poor performance caused Chaplin to decline to release it.[15] It went untouched until the U.S. Internal Revenue Service took an interest in Chaplin's finances. The negatives were burned on June 21, 1933 in front of five witnesses[16] as a total loss for tax purposes.[13] Some evidence suggests that a copy of the film survived at the Chaplin studio until at least late 1946, but no copy exists in the current Chaplin film archives.[17]

In 2005, over 50 previously unknown production stills were discovered in the private collection of Purviance's relatives. Except for a few images in print and a few words in books over the years, nearly nothing has been known about the film. The working title for A Woman of the Sea was Sea Gulls, as written in the shooting schedule that still survives. The original title list also has survived from the film. The information from the shooting schedule and title list has been combined with the production stills, and was published in 2008.

The film, and Chaplin himself, figure prominently in Tim Powers' fantasy novel Three Days to Never (Morrow, 2006). Though rooted in established facts, the fictionalized Chaplin is attributed motives—and the film attributed traits—that are largely invented by Powers.

• Linda Wada: The sea gull : "A woman of the sea" ; the Chaplin Studio's lost film starring Edna Purviance, Bend, Oregon : Leading Ladies, February 2010, ISBN 978-0-9826332-0-5

• A Woman of the Sea at IMDb