“A comedy romance in pantomime.”
City Lights: The world’s second greatest movie, so says the British Film Institute circa 1952 (second to Bicycle Thieves, which is more foreign and therefore better). Orson Welles’ favorite movie. Nearly so for Kubrick. More recently, AFI’s top romantic comedy, thirty-eighth best comedy, but somehow better than that overall at eleventh. IMDb’s highest-ranked silent film.
City Lights is very well Charlie Chaplin’s ultimate creation, even if he would personally point to something else (The Gold Rush) as his masterpiece – owing no doubt to the happier circumstances of its creation. City Lights is the essential Chaplin, the essential Little Tramp, because it unites all of Chaplin’s chief concerns into a single whole – his pathos, slapstick, pantomime, obsession with class as seen by a dignified vagabond. If the earlier, 1910s Tramp shorts created a formula (Tramp seeks Girl, usually fails), and longer features then explored that fundamental relationship through other entities such as a dog (A Dog’s Life) or a child (The Kid), then City Lights comes full circle, and wholly examines the Tramp and the Girl relationship at feature length, with the maturity of time. Unlike The Gold Rush (where the Girl’s presence is barely tolerable, for me) and The Circus (where she is a painless, necessary evil), in City Lights she is fundamental, essential for Chaplin to cement his combination of comedy and drama.
It is highly worth noting that City Lights is a silent movie, as have been all of Chaplin’s films so far. But it’s 1931 now, four years following The Jazz Singer, and the film industry has switched over to talkies with a dedication that should make today’s lunatic 3-D zealots blush. From 1929 onwards, one could nearly count on but two hands the silent movies released with that intent – it was no time to be a luddite, or nostalgic for an outdated format. Chaplin is a large part of this minor holdout, as he had the cachet to be free even from overarching entertainment meta-narratives – Buñuel, Murnau and Ozu are among the few other late-adopters.
The decision to retain silence is central to City Lights, which wouldn’t hold nearly its potency were it a product of but a few years earlier. Chaplin’s Tramp was, in Chaplin’s mind, purely a silent pantomime character, a wholly exaggerated, unreal figure whose very essence would be lost with speech – and keep in mind talkies of 1931 were largely word-obsessed harangues, never-ending diatribes delivered rapidly and unintelligibly before a static, disinterested camera. Truly a lot of cinema’s beauty was lost with the technological transition to chattiness, chiefly its air of spectacle, now that movies were limited to a soundstage. The very fundamental nature of filmmaking changed, to the extent where breathless exposition became a crutch, and it’s still difficult to find a movie which truly makes the utmost of its visual nature.
For Chaplin, his perfectionist approach to filming wouldn’t work with sound, which necessitates a script preplanned to the nth degree prior to shooting – totally at odds with Chaplin’s love (shared by most other silent film practitioners) for relative improvisation. A Chaplin joint would be sketched out in only the broadest terms prior to shooting, then largely made up on the spot – valuable for a clown like Chaplin, where the “voodoo of location” informs the performance greatly. In cinematic comedy, only recently is some degree of improvisation creeping back, but in a Judd Apatow form which isn’t really comparable. Hence, Chaplin-wise, sequences often follow with a sort of semi-logic, resulting in simple (but not simplistic) plots which are perfectly happy to give way to isolated comic set pieces. Hence the four-year gap between Chaplin films, and their astoundingly consistent quality.
City Lights is not, however, a pure silent film – not technically. It employs a synchronized soundtrack. Chaplin’s orchestrated music is married forever to the visuals onscreen – which is pretty similar to silent-era musical accompaniment, which Chaplin dictated for live performers, but couldn’t control as readily. (See the 1942 reissue of The Gold Rush for a similar approach.) On top of that, Chaplin incorporates “sound effects” into City Lights, and numerous gag routines simply would not work in pure silence: The Tramp, at a hoi polloi shindig of well-heeled snobs, swallows a whistle. He hiccups, it rings, and as a capper, the Tramp becomes Pied Piper to a motley crew of itinerant hound dogs. (A boxing bell serves a similar purpose later on.) Even as recently as 1927, such a scene wouldn’t even be legible. This is an example of Chaplin taking advantage of new technology as he saw fit – approximating something closer to live stage vaudeville – without being beholden to it. (This approach predicts the silent film homages of Jacques Tati.) It’s worth noting that the “sound effects” are really just pieces of music, like the noises reverse-engineered into Fantasia. Most of what appears visually makes no diagetic sound.
Nearly all of City Lights’ dialogue is conveyed the old-fashioned way: through title cards. The sole counterexample occurs at the very start, where a public speech is rendered aurally in “Peanuts”-style “wah-wah-wah-wah-wah” verbal nonsense – a succinct little parody of sound cinema, one I am wholly sympathetic to.
It’s a testament to Chaplin’s popularity and his control over the medium that City Lights was wholly embraced in the midst of a technological revolution. It stands as a treatise of what silence can do that chatter chatter chatter cannot, and thus becomes almost a textbook example of Chaplin. The setting, as per the title, is the city, notably the same basic gutter the Tramp often finds himself in when a more specific locale is unavailable. Such is possibly needed, to best comment upon the old Tramp archetype. There is one notable change, however: It’s now the Great Depression, with social and technological evolution wildly altering the Tramp’s familiar world. His own destitution now reads more clearly, as poverty was a greater daily fact than during the heady days of the ‘20s (at least, it seems more historically appropriate now in 2011).
Chaplin dwells upon class more strongly than usual, countering the Tramp (with his false airs towards sophistication) with a Millionaire (Harry Myers) whose recent financial failures push him in the opposite direction, towards the Tramp’s sphere. If I am still a little opposed to Chaplin’s unconditional hagiography of bums (seeing as he is a multi-millionaire), at least the historical context makes it more acceptable. But the Tramp is really a tool for framing more naturalistic characters, so it helps when all the characters exist in the same economic universe as he.
Romance is central to City Lights, and here it goes: Tonight’s Girl (Virginia Cherrill, only barely capable by Chaplin’s exacting, holier-than-thou standards, leading to occasional unsuccessful recasting and reshoots)…er, tonight’s Girl is a blind flower saleswoman. She is impoverished, at the same station as the Tramp, but beautiful, and therefore out of his league – or at least the Tramp leaps silently to this conclusion. He begins to court her, but with the lightly comic conceit that he must convince her all the while that he is wealthy.
Aiding the Tramp unintentionally in this rouse is the drunken, suicidal Millionaire, who, once the Tramp saves his inebriated life, enjoys a close friendship with him – but only when the Millionaire is wasted. Once sobriety rises its ugly, hangover-ridden head, the plutocrat cannot recognize the Tramp. Still, the Tramp has occasional access to items of wealth, allowing for a more maudlin variation on Tony Curtis’ yacht seduction in Some Like it Hot.
Notice immediately how neither the Girl nor the Millionaire is able to visually recognize the Tramp – which is important, because in silent cinema (unlike talkies), appearance is all there is. Especially with the Girl, Chaplin stages scenes according to the senses, with the only sense we can experience being the one sense the Girl is not afforded. Through her blindness, the Girl becomes a means to discuss (silent) cinema as a total, using a wholly cinematic (i.e. non-conversational) means to do so.
City Lights isn’t huge on plot – it mostly ping pongs the Tramp between the Girl and the Millionaire, with the Millionaire’s occasional inability to recognize the Tramp getting in his way of fooling the Girl into misidentifying him – whoo, my head hurts! Within this framework, as in most Chaplin efforts, there is plenty of room for gag sequences which would play perfectly well on their own as shorts. Mainly, the Tramp takes on an assortment of odd jobs, all done for the Girl’s benefit, and not out of need due to his own poverty – the Tramp’s personal destitution, though rather inescapable because of his archetypal nature, is little more than an ornamental detail.
The Tramp’s jobs range according to Chaplin’s random whims, owing to the broad, generic possibilities of the city setting. Notably, he becomes a pooper scooper and an amateur boxer. The former affords the single most tasteful elephant feces joke cinema has to offer. Tom Green, Chaplin ain’t. The latter creates a boxing sequence which stands as one of Chaplin’s single most celebrated routines, worthy of solo examination…
The Tramp attempts to fix a fight against another boxer, and split the winnings (instead of his skull). Circumstances conspire, as is their wont, so the Tramp instead faces a genuine threat in the ring (it’s Champ vs. Tramp), with only his (the Tramp’s) own arhythmic semi-comic gyrations to protect him. But the Tramp survives for quite a long while, simply by keeping the referee between himself and the boxer. There is some very careful choreography between the three men, and therefore the scene mostly plays out in a single wide shot, to highlight that fact. It seems most of Chaplin’s feature films showcase one show-stopping sequence such as this – The Kid’s vision of Heaven, The Gold Rush’s teetering cabin, The Circus’ trapeze act. Most of the time, this penultimate sequence promises guaranteed enjoyment, even if the overall film doesn’t perfectly work.
It is my curmudgeonly flaw that much of City Lights irks me ever so slightly, in the way all of Chaplin’s oeuvre does. The Girl needs money for that most melodramatic of reasons – she’s sick. The Kid, in its dramatic moments, similarly tugged at the heartstrings in a way which just feels cheap and unearned. Naturally, Chaplin’s narrative assumes the Girl and her family will not be able to pay the doctor’s bill (to say nothing of the late-due rent, just to add to the sorrow orgy). Therefore it’s up to the Tramp to raise the cash, for completely selfless reasons…which is totally selfish of Chaplin. We cheer on the Tramp, and by proxy Chaplin, for this fictional act of charity…or we’re meant to. Along with the occasional camera glances Chaplin insists upon, it’s a little too self-conscious, especially when the Tramp is more an incredibly complex system of tics rather than a genuine human being (which is simultaneously the Tramp’s greatest asset, but the reason I cannot side with him nearly as strongly as the everymen of Keaton or Lloyd).
Later on, the Tramp’s amateur philanthropy is motivated by a quest to purchase $1,000 eyeball surgery. This is more sensible, less melodramatic, and it works with that whole cinematic metaphor, so it’s good.
Meanwhile, the Tramp can never raise cash. Every job instead leads to comic failure. It is an old comedy standby that the hero can never catch a break, that a sitcom protagonist is always denied riches in favor of the status quo. That’s totally appropriate for the loosey-goosey serialization of the Tramp’s anti-continuous franchise. But he’s not doing this for himself, but for the Girl. The universe conspiring to deny her a surgery is only funny if it’s a greater hardship for the Tramp – and it isn’t. His philanthropy (already questionable) gets in the way of laughs, while aiming for emotion. I am a hard nut, and a movie which abandons laffs for seriousness is, to me, fundamentally flawed. It’s insincere.
The greatest issue, though, is the simple, eternal fact of the Chaplin universe: the poor cannot succeed on their own. I don’t wish to open some debate, but it’s a strange, anti-Horatio Alger sort of argument for a humanist, populist filmmaker like Chaplin to put forth. When the Tramp does amass cash, it’s simply as a random, unearned gift from the drunken Millionaire – it’s always, always, ALWAYS a deus ex machina with Chaplin! This is actually a greater fairytale than a story about “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.” Wealth may only be obtained by random dumb luck. What the hell sort of a message is that?!
Besides, the Millionaire sobers up almost instantly after paying the Tramp (following a rather left-field burglar sequence), and thus thinks the Tramp is stealing. Thus the Tramp flees from the cops – that old standby. In some fundamental sense, the Tramp always steals, and though this is different, it feels equally problematic.
All that aside, the moment comes for the Girl’s sight surgery. The ending to City Lights is famously regarded as one of the most brilliant, moving moments in film. I have never been able to watch this scene without the baggage of that claim weighing down upon me. I’ve never felt the raw emotive power others describe – intellectually I kinda get it, so let’s just leave it in those terms…
Chaplin’s films are often defined by their endings, be they happy or sad. What City Lights does well, without revealing too much detail (because you really ought to see it for yourself, in spite of my personal apathy), is that it creates an open-ended resolution. What occurs has the potential for bliss or tragedy. The conclusion also ties up all of City Lights’ silent film metaphorics, in a way that is a great big question mark about the future of cinema. Given Chaplin’s own ambivalence towards talk, that feels like the best way to leave things off.
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