Were it not for Charlie Chaplin, Ernst Lubitsch's Hollywood career might have ended after a single film. By Lubitsch's own account, Chaplin's 1923 dramatic feature A Woman of Paris gave him hope for the possibilities of sophisticated Hollywood picture-making after what he perceived to be the failure of his first American feature Rosita (1923). As he told The New York Times at the time, “I like it because I feel that an intelligent man speaks to me and nobody's intelligence is insulted in the picture.” Lubitsch saw the film alongside the scenarist Paul Bern during the summer of 1923, invited to view an early rough cut by Chaplin himself, and would regard the experience as transformative, telling his biographer that he “would have returned to Germany” were it not for that film. For years afterwards, he would continue to sing its praises, comparing Chaplin to Moliére, Ibsen, and others. “‘The Woman of Paris’—a masterpiece—such genius— such genius,” he effused to one reporter. Any filmmaking system, and any filmgoing public, that could support such a film could surely accommodate the mode of sophisticated comedy he envisioned.

Lubitsch's extensive praise for A Woman of Paris was not just a matter of abstract admiration. Within months, the impact of that film would be felt within his own work.