Film: City Lights
Director: Charlie Chaplin
Country: UK / USA
Released: January 1931
Runtime: 87 minutes
Genre: Comedy
Studio: United Artists
Influenced: Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Guillermo del Toro
I don't think there's any better way to round off Film 365's coverage of the silent era of cinema than with a movie that Chaplin had the audacity to make 3-4 years into the Hollywood sound era, but in which he refused to use dialogue, only allowing music and occasional sound effects as enhancements to the story. In its opening scene, City Lights even mocks the "talkies" – with Chaplin using what sounds like a kazoo to mimic the sound of self-important dignitaries making speeches at a statue's unveiling – and the film itself is an act of defiance, a living example of the power of silent film.
Such was the care with which Chaplin made this film that the scene depicting the initial meeting of the blind woman and the Tramp holds the Guinness Book of World Records awards for the most number of takes (in this case, 342!). It all now looks effortless. Chaplin's decision to portray the life of a disabled woman was inspired by the death of his mother – who suffered from mental illness – just prior to the filming of City Lights. This is reminiscent of the plot of The Kid being inspired by the death of Chaplin's son, and gives both films an added charge of emotion.
Harry Myers plays the film's third main character, an eccentric millionaire bent on suicide, who is rescued by the Tramp. The two strike up a wonderful friendship while the millionaire is drunk – especially memorable are the scenes of them out on the town together smoking cigars – but the Tramp is rejected when the millionaire is sober. The Tramp's relationship with the blind woman suffers similar highs and lows, and he is inspired by her plight to find work to help pay for her groceries and a Viennese doctor's cure for blindness. He works as a street sweeper and even ends up in the boxing ring to raise funds.
Eventually it's the millionaire who stumps up the money for the blind woman's cure and the Tramp somehow, after evading the clutches of burglars and policemen, gets the money to her so that she can undergo the operation. But the Tramp then ends up in jail. I won't spoil the ending, other than to say it's truly moving, accompanied by the perfect swell of the music. Like The Kid, City Lights is one of Chaplin's most perfect films, finding a careful balance between comedy and pathos. City Lights also marked the start of a more political phase in Chaplin's filmmaking, but this here is peak Chaplin.
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