"City Lights"

I have wanted to watch Charlie Chaplin's "City Lights" for at least a couple of months, when I started formally learning about movies in a Classics of French Cinema class I took last semester at Tufts. I think my professor must have mentioned this movie when we talked about silent films and Chaplin's work and influence in particular.


After watching the movie, I am certain that it was made for entertainment and not as an art film. Once I started noticing that, I decided to look for shots of motion to see how the film dealt with storytelling and if there were interesting, exciting, and beautiful shots. Most of the moving that the Tramp (Chaplin) and his comedic counterpart, the millionaire, do consists of falls, fights, funny walking, and driving (often drunkenly and recklessly). The Tramp and the millionaire meet when the millionaire, drunk, is about to commit suicide. The Tramp somehow becomes tied up in the millionaire's noose tied to a rock and falls in the water instead. The camera is at a wide enough angle to show the river, a set of stairs down to its bank and the bank itself, where the Tramp and the millionaire wrestle each other and fall again and again.  


There were some sequences of shots that I thought were really strong and excellent at showing and telling a joke. These comedy scenes were the most engaging and compelling for me, whereas I found the idea or premise of the love story between the Tramp and the Blind Girl more lovely than the way it really looked. I think Chaplin's waddle, facial expressions and his character's repeated failures and losses, and more, take away from that plot's romanticism. He is simply too much of a character, or rather caricature to believe in the truth, reality or honesty of his love.

One scene I want to point out as effective and wonderfully light hearted is during "The Party" segment of "City Lights". It felt to me like a an example of the magic of cinema. The film techniques in the scene where the Tramp swallows a small whistle tell a joke so smartly and breezily. In the scene, the Tramp swallows whistle while sitting down on an elegant sofa. A live band starts playing music, which seems to be another example of things that the moving picture can capture really well (I thought of the band that made a couple appearances in "Hugo" and of the big bands in Fred Astaire and other dance-centric movies), and then we hear the whistle, while the camera stays on the band. Then camera jumps to the Tramp and then back to the band, focusing on the musicians' confused faces. The camera jumps between those two shots several times, as the audience watching the movie and the audience in the movie figure out what's happening. Then the Tramp leaves the party and sits outside on a bench, still trying to control his hiccoughing whistle sounds. The camera cuts to a taxi that pulls up, waiting for the Tramp, the driver thinking that he'd called for it. The Tramp waves it away, obviously annoyed. The camera stays on the Tramp now, still sitting. He hiccups some more, and two dogs come and jump up on him! This sequence of shots is brilliant at telling a joke. It also helps attract some sympathy for the Tramp, whose faults seem to be more often the result of circumstance than his own character.