Directed by Charlie Chaplin
Starring Charles Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill and Florence Lee
Produced by Charles Chaplin Productions
It's a big day in the city. The mayor is unveiling a new statue titled "Peace and Prosperity" and a crowd has gathered for the event. After some speeches by local dignitaries the tarp is raised to reveal...
...the Tramp fast asleep in the lap of one of the statues. After a series of failed attempts to descend from the statue before the jeering crowd, our hero finally escapes.
He encounters a blind girl selling flowers. She is beautiful and he is smitten. He uses his last coin to buy a single flower from him and refuses the change.
Later that night, as the Tramp sits on a dock admiring his flower, a millionaire arrives intent on drowning himself. The tramp intervenes, saving the man's life and becoming his friend. The only problem is the rich man only recognizes the poor man as his friend if he's been drinking.
The Tramp sets out to raise enough money to buy the girl an eye surgery to restore her sight. Of course, a man in his lowly position runs into obstacles at every turn. Can he earn the money or will he have to steal it? And what will be the consequences of his actions?
Over the last decade, my experience with Chaplin has been rough. Since 1921's The Kid, I've liked, but not loved, anything he's done.
That stops now.
City Lights is endlessly funny and hopelessly romantic. Every element of Chaplin's talents as an actor, writer and director shine through.
The film tells a relatively straightforward story about a man who will do anything for the girl he loves. The central conflict behind the scenes at all times is that to help her means to restore her sight which will shatter the illusion she has of who her benefactor is.
However, that basic structure is deconstructed into a series of smaller scenes, each of which can stand on its own. The film's comic genius really shines here. The moments of Chaplin saving the millionaire during his suicide attempt on the dock feature brilliant comic timing combined with character development. His first scene with the blind girl has a humor that makes you smile and a sweetness that drives the story later. And the boxing scene...
Chaplin's scenes preparing for and ultimately boxing a larger man are some of the funniest physical comedy I've ever seen. It's not a boxing match, it's a dance, with each step finely choreographed and never a moment wasted. The way Chaplin positions himself behind the ref. The rope to ringing the bell wrapping around his neck to save and doom the Tramp moment by moment. It's an astonishing sequence in its ingenuity and humor.
Of course, after disassembling a basic plot into these chapters, it is all reassembled to say more than most films. The basic story has two people not merely saved, but given new lives by the poorest man you can imagine. Both are blind to who he really is for a time, but when the rich man sees the tramp, he detests the filthy beggar. When the flower girl who raised herself up to own her own shop sees him, it's love. Powerful stuff in the midst of the Great Depression.
Chaplin is also obviously making one last case for silent film. He openly mocks the talkies in the opening scene by replacing the words of the politicians with kazoos, but the rest of the film proves a moving argument for the power of the image over the word to make us feel.
In case it's not obvious, I love City Lights. Chaplin uses his most character to say more through silence than any of his contemporary talkies.
***** out of *****
