My Favorite Movies: City Lights (1931)

During the silent era of Hollywood, there was a great demand for comedy, particularly of the screwball variety, usually involving lots of visual misunderstandings and chase scenes. Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd are regularly recognized as the three masters of that genre during the period. There is usually a great debate amongst critics as to who was the greatest of these artists. The general consensus is usually that Chaplin played things too schmaltzy to be even compared to the incredible Keaton. Chaplin also has his supporters, though, who defend his attempts to provide meaning to his misadventures. Often, Lloyd gets simply forgotten about, but that’s for another day.

I try not to take any sides on this argument, because each of these men were geniuses and they each have wonderful movies to back them up. Of all of the comedies released featuring them, however, my favorite would have to be Chaplin’s City Lights. Although to call it a comedy almost does it an involuntary injustice, making those unfamiliar with the material imagine a bunch of ridiculous buffoonery.

Ridiculous buffoonery has its place, a little of it being in this very movie, but this is actually a very serious movie accompanied by its share of laughs. You see, Harold Lloyd was the everyman, Buster Keaton was the stuntman, and Charlie Chaplin was the romantic. His films would often try to pull at heartstrings even before tugging at the funny bone. His The Kid, for example, left more laughs off the screen then any of his movies, shooting instead for a completely tragic style of storytelling.

City Lights blends the drama and comedy together better than any other attempt of the time. The story has Chaplin’s famous nameless Tramp character encountering a poor blind girl played by Virginia Cherrill. Although the Tramp is equally as poor, he has an accidental millionaire friend who gives him anything he wants while drunk, but does not remember anything when sober.

The scene when the Tramp first meets the girl and buys a single flower from her is the heartbreaking chord that resonates through the rest of the film. He does not realize she is blind at first, and when she drops the flower she is handing him, he picks it up, while she slowly stoops down and begins searching for it. The look on his face at this realization mirrors what we are feeling  for this poor girl. The Tramp falls quite in love with her and begins seeing her under the guise of a gentleman, using the millionaire’s resources, of course.

Chaplin was a great actor as well as a great director. He knew when he needed to be in the spotlight stealing the show and when he needed to submit to the camera for the greater good. The Tramp is not in every scene, with Cherrill getting more screen time than you might expect. Her performance is just as endearing as Chaplin’s, which is a good thing since the whole film depends on her making us feel for her situation.

This movie was meant as an inspiration for those, like the characters in the film, who were still suffering from the Depression. It is also a very defiant film since by 1931 everybody had already converted to talkies, while Chaplin was the only big artist who stuck stubbornly with the notion that silent films had greater artistic quality than the more vulgar show of sound. I applaud his decision, as this story very much benefits from the silence, although appropriate score and sound effects were added in.

At the same time, I am glad that Chaplin did eventually make the shift to sound, because a movie like The Great Dictator wouldn’t have worked without it. You can see him beginning to budge a bit even in this film, with the scene in which the Tramp swallows a whistle being a perfect example. The sound effects added make the scene even funnier, with that little tweet of Chaplin’s hiccups being used to great effect, like accidentally hailing a cab and attracting every dog in the vicinity.

What struck me the most in re-watching City Lights is how charmingly innocent it all is. There is a scene where the Tramp winds up in the middle of a rather wild party, where a girl in a slip is dancing on a table amongst other tomfoolery, and he seems completely oblivious, happily munching on finger food with his back to the world. Another moment finds him taking only two drinks and becoming completely drunk, going so far as to eat the long strings of confetti at a restaurant thinking they are part of his spaghetti.

The Tramp is, after all, a child-like character. Look at the scene where he alludes the millionaire’s butler, runs into the house, and jumps into a tall chair, kicking his feet merrily. His complete devotion to the blind girl, even when aware of the possibility her love may not be returned when she discovers who he is, is heart-warming and refreshing. It kind of makes you feel good to see true, honest people portrayed on the screen as heroes, especially during a time when gangsters and monsters were beginning to be idolized as screen stars.

The best moment in the film is at the very end when the Tramp has been released from a year-long prison sentence after being accused of stealing a thousand dollars that the millionaire had given him. Before his arrest, he had been able to give the money to the girl to get her eyes fixed, which she does. The final scene has him absently walking past her new flower shop, and she eventually realizes who he his. It’s a wonderful moment that must be seen rather than described. Some say it’s corny, just like everything Chaplin did. I say it’s one of the most perfect moments in American cinema; closing out one of the best pictures ever filmed.