Chaplin’s silent masterpiece still shines

During the era of silent films three come­di­ans stood out and, even today, are defined as genius­es of their genre. I am speak­ing of Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton and the star of today’s Reel Classic, Charlie Chaplin. City Lights was released in 1931, and one of the more inter­est­ing facts is that this clas­sic Chaplin silent film was released sev­er­al years after the talkies had replaced the silent films on the screen.

Charlie Chaplin began work­ing on the script for City Lights ear­ly in 1928. Talkies were just begin­ning to take hold with the view­ing pub­lic. He was not con­vinced that talkies would replace the silent film. In an inter­view with a reporter he said he would “give the talkies three years, that’s all.” He also was con­cerned that his beloved char­ac­ter “the Tramp” would not tran­si­tion well into the talkies. Because Chaplin owned his own stu­dio and financed the project him­self, he was under no strict time­line. Along with writ­ing the script, he also direct­ed and pro­duced the film. His com­plete con­trol over the project cou­pled with his per­fec­tion­ist ways led to the film not being released until January 1931. An exam­ple of his will­ing­ness to film a scene over until he was com­plete­ly sat­is­fied was a scene where the Tramp buys a flower from the blind flower girl. He shot that scene 342 times before he felt sat­is­fied with it.

The sto­ry of City Lights is very heart-warm­ing and touch­ing even in its set­ting as a com­e­dy. Chaplin as the Tramp meets a beau­ti­ful young woman (Virginia Cherrill) on a street cor­ner and is quite tak­en with her. She is sell­ing flow­ers, and he soon becomes aware that she is blind. He buys a flower from her and as he leaves she hears a car door slam. She mis­takes him for a wealthy man think­ing that he was leav­ing in the car.

Later that evening the Tramp comes across a rich man (Harry Myers) who is drunk and con­tem­plat­ing sui­cide. The Tramp pre­vents him from doing so and the mil­lion­aire takes him back to his man­sion for more drinks and then on to a par­ty. Assisting him home the next morn­ing the Tramp sees the flower girl again and gets some mon­ey from the rich man to buy all of her flow­ers. He then has her returned home in the millionaire’s car. The flower girl resides with her grand­moth­er and she tells her grand­moth­er of this very kind and wealthy man who has assist­ed her.

Meanwhile, the Tramp returns to the man­sion of the rich man who has since sobered and doesn’t remem­ber any­thing of the pre­vi­ous evening. He demands the Tramp leave his home imme­di­ate­ly. Later that evening the rich man is again out on the town and drunk. He sees the Tramp and once again invites him to his home to par­ty. The pat­tern is repeat­ed the next morn­ing when the man wakes up sober and doesn’t remem­ber any­thing about the Tramp — toss­ing him out of his house.

Going to the cor­ner to see the flower girl the Tramp dis­cov­ers she is not there. He pro­ceeds to where she lives and over­hears a doc­tor telling the grand­moth­er that the girl is sick with a fever. Concerned for her he takes a job as a street sweep­er to buy her gro­ceries, and, while vis­it­ing her, reads to her from a news­pa­per. He reads a sto­ry of a Viennese doc­tor who report­ed­ly has a cure for blind­ness. Upon hear­ing the sto­ry the flower girl says “Wonderful, then I’ll be able to see you.” While there he also comes across an evic­tion notice for fail­ure to pay the rent. He is deter­mined to pay the rent for her. He par­tic­i­pates in a box­ing match that is fixed with the promise he will get some of the prize money.

As you may well imag­ine, things do not go as planned.  The Tramp does man­age to get the rich man to pro­vide the mon­ey for the flower girl’s surgery, but then the rich man does­n’t remem­ber doing so.  The police then get involved and seek the Tramp for rob­bery.  I won’t go into any fur­ther detail but I will say that there is a hap­py end­ing (sort of).  No spoilers.

As men­tioned above, this movie was released dur­ing the rise of the sound era. Chaplin did make a con­ces­sion to the sound era in this film. Silent films in the past were usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by live music per­formed in the the­ater. Chaplin com­posed the music score for this film and the sound in the film was the music score and sound effects. No spo­ken dia­logue was record­ed. It was not his last silent film either. Modern Times was released in 1936 with again music and sound effects and no dia­logue. That would be his last silent film and his last por­tray­al of the Tramp as a character.

As men­tioned above, Chaplin was a bit of a per­fec­tion­ist and was very demand­ing of the actors involved in his films. Reportedly he had a vision of how each scene should play and was per­sis­tent until his vision was real­i­ty. An inter­view in 1991 with Robert Parrish, one of the actors who por­trayed a news­boy harass­ing the Tramp with peashoot­ers, clear­ly describes Chaplin’s method: “Chaplin was a dervish. He would blow a pea from the peashoot­er, play­ing both my part and the part of Austen Jewell, the oth­er news­boy. He would then run over and react as the Tramp being hit by it, then back to the news­boys and blow anoth­er pea. He would then play Virginia Cherrill’s part of the Blind Girl. Then he was the Tramp. Then he would instruct what the back­ground peo­ple should be doing. Everyone watched as he act­ed out all the parts for us. When he felt he had it all worked out, he reluc­tant­ly gave us back our parts . . . I believe he would much rather played them all him­self if he could.”

Chaplin also fired his co-star, Virginia Cherrill, mid­way through the film­ing when she report­ed­ly showed up late to the set com­ing from an appoint­ment. He intend­ed to replace her with actress Georgia Hale who starred with him in the 1925 film The Gold Rush. However, he real­ized that re-shoot­ing all of the scenes with the blind flower girl would be very cost­ly and time-con­sum­ing and he request­ed Virginia Cherrill return to the set. She agreed but only if her salary was dou­bled. Chaplin agreed.

An inter­est­ing note regard­ing Virginia Cherrill. Though she had appeared in a film pre­vi­ous­ly as an extra, this was her first act­ing role. Chaplin had met her at a gath­er­ing and she asked him if she would ever get a chance to work with him. He had been con­duct­ing audi­tions for the role of the blind flower girl but had not found any­one yet. He offered her the oppor­tu­ni­ty to audi­tion and she was able to act blind to his sat­is­fac­tion. In real­i­ty she was near-sight­ed and had vision issues. A final inter­est­ing note about her — she met Cary Grant at a film pre­mière a year after City Lights was released and mar­ried him in 1934.

The film pre­miered in Los Angeles in January 1931. Charlie Chaplin attend­ed the pre­mière and was accom­pa­nied by Albert Einstein and his wife. Chaplin described the event in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy and stat­ed that when the house lights came on at the end of the film he was sur­prised to see Einstein with tears in his eyes. The final scene is quite mov­ing and was described lat­er by a crit­ic for Life mag­a­zine as the “great­est sin­gle piece of act­ing ever com­mit­ted to celluloid.”

City Lights became one of Chaplin’s most suc­cess­ful films and was the high­est gross­ing film of 1931 in the United States. It earned over $4 mil­lion world­wide upon its release and this was in the midst of the Depression. Most crit­ics’ reviews were very pos­i­tive. The crit­ic for the Los Angeles Examiner wrote that “not since I reviewed the first Chaplin come­dies way back in the two-reel days has Charlie giv­en us such an orgy of laughs.” The New York Times review­er described it as “a film worked out with admirable artistry.”

As we have seen many times with the films reviewed here in Reel Classics, the pass­ing of time has brought even greater admi­ra­tion of the work. The film was re-released in 1950 and was again pos­i­tive­ly received by film-goers and crit­ics alike. Life mag­a­zine went so far as to praise it as “the best movie of 1950.”

In 1997 City Lights was select­ed by the Library of Congress for preser­va­tion in the National Film Registry. In 2007 the American Film Institute ranked it at #11 in their list of Greatest Movies of All Time. Roger Ebert has includ­ed the film in his “Great Movies” list, and it is includ­ed in Steven Schneider’s “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.”

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) rates City Lights at 8.5 of 10. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a Critics Score of 95% and an Audience Score of 95%. I have good news regard­ing the search of my Roku device. I found the film avail­able for free stream­ing on the fol­low­ing sites: Pluto TV, Tubi, Fawesome, Hoopla (avail­able free with a library card) and Movie Vault. The Clark County Public Library does not have a copy of the DVD on the shelf, but I am sure they will get it if you ask.

As men­tioned above, Charlie Chaplin was one of the three most influ­en­tial and gift­ed come­di­ans of the silent era. He cre­at­ed one of the most endear­ing and unfor­get­table char­ac­ters of the screen with the Tramp. In essence, with City Lights we are near­ing a final good­bye to the Tramp. In clos­ing I will quote Jeffrey Vance who wrote a biog­ra­phy of Charlie Chaplin enti­tled “Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema.” He stat­ed: “In the final analy­sis, Chaplin had done what many thought impos­si­ble. He had pro­duced a crit­i­cal­ly and com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful silent film three years after the demise of American silent cin­e­ma . . .City Lights is Chaplin at the height of his pow­ers, pro­vid­ing a lov­ing look — and farewell — to the pure art of silent filmmaking.” 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from sources includ­ing the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Wikipedia.