A Woman of the Sea (1926)

Director:

Josef von Sternberg

Writer:

Josef von Sternberg (writer)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Joan and Magdalen are the daughters of a fisherman. Magdalen leaves her fiancé, Peter, to run off to the big city...

Plot Keywords:

Unreleased Film | Lost Film | Beautiful Woman

Cast

  (Credited cast)

Edna Purviance	...	Joan
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Raymond Bloomer	...	Peter the Fisherman
Charles K. French	...	The Father
Eve Southern	...	Magdalen
Gayne Whitman	...	The Novelist from the City

Also Known As:

A Woman by the Sea (USA)
Sea Gulls (USA) (working title)
The Sea Gull (USA) (alternative title)

Runtime:

75 min

Country:

USA

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Filming Locations:

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, USA

Company:

Charles Chaplin Productions

Trivia:

Never officially released.

A lost film...isn't it??

It has been reported in many sources that this film was never released and is a lost film. A typical report, and quite accurate, based on my reading of other sources, is the one following, in the Wikipedia: "A Woman of the Sea, also known by its working title Sea Gulls, was an unreleased 1926 film produced by the Chaplin Film Company. The now lost film ... was directed by Josef von Sternberg. The film was in production for about six months. Actual filming took about three 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. 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. This was the only time Chaplin produced a film in which he neither starred nor directed. His involvement in the production was minimal, as he was concurrently working on his problem-plagued film The Circus. It was Purviance's final American film. Chaplin did not approve the completed film for release, and it was never publicly screened. The few Chaplin associates who saw the film agreed in later years that it was not a commercially viable film. Under pressure from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, the production company burned the negatives in June 1933 for tax purposes. Some evidence suggests a copy of the film survived at the Chaplin studio until at least the late 1930's, but no copy exists in the current Chaplin film archives. Around 40 previously unknown production stills were recently 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."

CAN ANYONE EXPLAIN, THEN, HOW THIS FILM CAN HAVE 13 IMDb USER RATINGS, INCLUDING 4 US USERS AND 6 NON-US USERS???