Bright City Lights

"It doesn't get any better than this."
- My friend Terry, just before we sat down for a screening of City Lights in our American Film Comedy class.

I could not love any movie more than I love City Lights. It speaks to my heart, to my soul, to my loneliness, and to my fear of love more than anything else.
-Journal entry, December 15, 1996, 2 AM

Maybe that's what Chaplin had in mind-that all of us are blind, and afraid of being seen at the same time. But the only way to love-and be loved is to see past the barriers, and to let oneself be seen without them.
-Journal entry, January 7, 1997, 11:51 PM


City Lights is the most beautiful film ever made. When I say beauty, I don't mean that it has stunning visuals or superb effects. Its beauty is beneath the surface. Like the clownish tramp played by Charlie Chaplin, it is masked in humor. Only in the end are the lines in his pantomime face revealed.

When that happens, it is one of the most striking moments in cinema history.

But before we get to that point, writer/director Chaplin tells the tale of "A Tramp," who falls in love with a "Blind Flower Girl." She is poor, supporting herself and her grandmother by selling flowers on the street. Chaplin is able to help her out and fool her into thinking he's a wealthy gentleman.

What helps lift the film from schmaltzy love story to work of art is the care Chaplin put into the development of this simple plot. For instance, he struggled for a plausible way for the blind girl to believe Chaplin is rich. The scene that sets up her confusion is choreographed to perfection. Chaplin climbs through the backseat of a parked car, exiting near the girl. When she hears the door close, she asks him to purchase a flower. Enchanted by her beauty, he buys one from her. But as she is getting his change, the real owner of the car returns, shutting the door and making the girl believe Chaplin has gone off. When she calls out to him, Chaplin realizes her mistake and he backs off. Thus, she is fooled into thinking he's much more than a street tramp.


The ruse continues thanks to Chaplin's inebriated relationship with "An Eccentric Millionaire," portrayed by Harry Myers. The running theme of the film is that Chaplin's tramp is only accepted by other members of society if they are somehow "blinded" and cannot see who he really is.

In addition to the pathos of City Lights, Chaplin presents some of the funniest sequences ever seen on film: the first meeting between Chaplin and the millionaire; their subsequent "night on the town"; and perhaps most memorable, a prizefight Chaplin competes in to win money for the girl.

Another interesting aspect of the film involves Virginia Cherrill, who stars as "Blind Flower Girl." Unlike the majority of his female co-stars, Chaplin was not romantically involved with Cherrill, and in fact they didn't get along. In the documentary Unknown Chaplin it tells how Chaplin became frustrated enough with Cherrill to consider replacing her with his lover at the time (and The Gold Rush co-star) Georgia Hale. Chaplin went so far as to film Hale in the film's final scene. But the actress, clearly in love with Chaplin, could not convey the complex emotions that the flower girl must feel in order to give the scene its poignancy. As it turns out, Cherrill was the ideal choice.

While I know some reject City Lights as overly sentimental, I think they have misread the film. Certainly it is on the surface, but to me the film is much deeper. And the emotions evoked by the final scene are more challenging. Chaplin is taking the Tramp, who was already a well-known (if not quite iconic) image when the film came out, and presenting him as more than just the caricature that audiences had come to know and love. It is the most "real" moment for the character-filled with ambiguity. Rather than sentimental, the ending strikes me more as revealing and even risky.


City Lights is a silent film in the sense that there is no "spoken" dialogue. But a beautiful score written by Chaplin compliments it, and as I wrote in my journal entry, it really does "speak" to the viewer. The language of film goes well beyond the dialogue spoken between actors. It is the expressions, the actions, and the looks. Few films demonstrate this connection between viewer and film in the way that City Lights does.

*This review originally ran on the web message board Moviola at ezboard.com.