Spoilers Ahead
To start my journey into film again, I thought it would be best to watch a notable comedy. City Lights is a 1931 film directed by Charlie Chaplin. The film is one of his most acclaimed because it is so far-reaching in humor and heart. The movie uses poverty and wealth in such an entangled manner that it seems to be a piece of art never extinguished.
Chaplin plays his titular character “the tramp” who helps his love interest a blind girl (Virginia Cherrill) who sells flowers. Cherrill’s character doesn’t know he is a poor man, but he plays up the idea that he is a wealthy man here to save her. He gets a job, fights in a humorous boxing match, and uses the wealth of a drunken rich friend who only recognizes him when drunk to help her cure her blindness and pay her rent.
The film's opening, when Chaplin hangs up on a newly erected monument in the city, sets the stage for the humor of the work. Chaplin doesn't have simplistic humor, but I think his humor transcends class. If you say the humor is simply slapstick that would be limiting to the comedy that comes from different arenas of situation. Chaplin knows what he’s doing, and he plays into human emotion.
People like to laugh, but they also cry, they also like to see the little guy win in the end. I think Chaplin uses his character to its fullest potential. He is a tramp, so we see him arrested and treated poorly by two kids on the street. We see the realities of how poor people deal with harassment. Contrast that with the drunken rich man Chaplin buddies up with and you see that that man likes partying, and drinking coupled with his attempted suicide based on his wife divorcing him. The rich have problems too and these problems are in a dog-eat-dog society. The robber scene demonstrates this reality when Chaplin is accused of the crime himself. In general, it seems Chaplin wants us to transfer back to an idealistic world where beauty and human emotion come first.
Chaplin wants to get across that we must transcend class and that it doesn’t matter whether you’re rich or poor. The human experience is full of problems but there are always people with strong values and integrity on either side. It’s just that Chaplin’s sometimes foolish clumsy behavior makes us want to root for him throughout the film. It isn’t much of a contest for Chaplin in this piece because it seems his audience is with him. He does his traditional walk, he breathes life into the role, and he challenges the flaws of society while being humorous about it.
City Lights to me is a perfect film. The humor that it throws at us never gets old and it tugs at our heartstrings in a manner that calls to us to feel the artistic construction. Chaplin’s smiling face at the end of the film when the cured girl hands him a flower. These scenes will always be iconic to me. There are so many iconic moments in this film and I don’t know what could make it better. City Lights is a strong contender for my favorite Chaplin film.
CM
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