Analysis of City Lights (1931) by Charlie Chaplin

City Lights (1931). Directed by Charles Chaplin; written by Charles Chaplin; produced by Charles Chaplin Productions; Genre: Comedy/Drama; silent.

The movie City Lights by Charlie Chaplin is about a tramp falling in love with a blind girl. The Tramp, as understood from his name, is a poor man. He befriends a very drunk rich man as the man tries to kill himself and they become close friends, as long as the rich man is drunk. The blind girl, who makes a living by selling flowers on the streets gets sick and soon she and her grandmother receives a notice reminding them to pay the rent, or else they will be evicted. The Tramp works in various jobs to make money for the rent and for the girl’s eye surgery. He then is put into jail from a misunderstanding. Months later he stumbles upon the now seeing girl and the movie ends.

The movie relies heavily on misunderstandings as elements of humor without neglecting telling a heartwarming love story. The movie was made in an era where movies with sounds were becoming more and more popular but Chaplin still made a silent movie.

Even though the movie is a dialogue-less movie, it is not totally silent. City Lights is the first time Chaplin composed the film score. He usually had live sounds to his movies but around 1930’s, most theaters stopped having an orchestra. Arthur Johnson was the person who wrote the score to the movie. In one interview, Chaplin said “I really didn’t write it down. I la-laed and Johnson wrote it down and I wish you would give him credit” because Chaplin was usually credited as the composer. His intention was to have a score that would represent the characters’ feelings in a more clear way.

The movie starts with a wide shot, setting the scenery and from then on the movie consists mainly of long shots or mid shots.

Capture 1

 In the capture 1, we see a crowd in front of a government authority, all dressed up in fancy clothes. It is apparentaly an important event as they listen to the man very carefully. This shot is a high angle one, making the crowd look very insignificant. Also their faces are not shown which contribute to the insignificant theme. Altough the crowd looks unimportant, the authority figure is facing the camera and his body is fully out there; makes him look important. The intertitle for this scene is gibberish -it has no meaning. In this scene Chaplin messed with the man. Both as the character and the producer. As the Tramp, he wakes up on the statue, completly ignoring its fanciness and even sticks his butt to the statue; as the producer, he only adds nonsense voice over to the man's speech, making him look like a fool and the audience like a herd of sheep. It is possible to see iron bars in the background which gives a vibe of entrapment.

After that scene, there are mainly long shots;

On the left, we see the Tramp on the statue, fooling with the mayor. It is a low angle shot which makes the character look mightier even though he is a homeless man. Of course the Tramp panics and tries to flee from the scene but being himself, he messes up. Makes a fool out of himself while making a fool of the mayor too.




This shot is an eye level shot where we clearly see the Tramp standing in front of the rich guy's door. He was just rejected by the sober rich guy and now he has nowhere to go or be - feeling distressed. With his posture and the bars behind him, we understand that he is trapped in this miserable life.

This shot is from moments before the iconic boxing scene. It is eye level angle, and we see a weak man's body as he is about to getready for a fight. Even though there is a door behind him, this is a close frame which lets us know that he has no choice but to fight.

                                                                                                  

And one of the most iconic scenes in film, this is before the Tramp finally reconnects with the Blind Girl. A slight high angle tells us that he is feeling low because he had been under arrest for the last few months and he is about to see the love of his life again, not knowing what will happen.

And mid-shots;

Now this one was a personal favorite for me. Honestly this scene was gold. This eye level angle shot didn't give any extra meanings other than this was going to be one hell of a fun scene. In this scene a serious of unfortunate misunderstandings happen to the very drunk rich man and the good old Tramp. My favorite scene so far.

This high level angle screams a meaning to me, and probably to the Tramp; you dont belong here!
It makes him look small, unimportant, not fitting because he is not a part of the elite life style. He doesn't even know the simplest etiquette. Altough he looks rather happy.

This high angle scene was a heartbreaker - the girl had just received the news that the Tramp would be gone for a while. Makes her look small too, because she is the most vulnerable now. She is sick, poor and now the love of her life is gone for how long only Lord knows.

And this one scene, one that made me go "wow!" because knowing the circumstances of the era (you know, no green screen, no moving the camera etc) I legit thought about how they shot this scene for five minutes. Of course I could only come up with one answer: Chaplin magic.
This is an eye level angle shot and one that simply amazes me.

On the famous movie critic website Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has received 44 reviews from serious movie critic people and 43 of them are positive, which makes the movie “Fresh Tomato certified”. Reviewers are from New York Times, Chicago-Sun Times and many others.

The “Rotten Tomato” is from The Nation and the review is written by Alexander Bakshy. In his comment, Bakshy says that Chaplin’s effort to be more than just a comedian made him use the sentimental themes more than fun themes and that deceived him.

Although Bakshy made a daring comment about this piece, there are still 43 positive reviews, which leaves City Lights with a 98% Tomatometer score.

On the same website, there is a user review section which is on the 96% mark on the Tomatometer. According to the website, 26.438 users have left reviews for this movie and the average score is 4,4/5.

Another movie critic website is IMDB and on IMDB the movie has a score of 8,6/10 and that note was given by 109.807 users. There are 138 critic reviews and City Lights is the 35^th most ranked movie in a list of best 250 movies of all time.

For my personal opinion, I was surprised. I never remember laughing at a silly accident jokes in a movie; yet Chaplin made me snicker more times than I’d like to admit. And I may know the reason behind this; because today in comedy movies, accident jokes are either sexual (and very sexist) or just basic. Chaplin on the other hand, his jokes were thoroughly planned and smart. That made me laugh. Smart jokes, not just dumb and overused jokes.

In conclusion, this iconic movie to the film world was also an iconic one for my world too. It made me laugh, it made me sad, it made me think and question 'how' and most importantly made me believe in the magic world of filmmaking more and more.

References;

David Robinson: Chaplin: His Life and Art

www.rottentomatoes.com/m/city_lights/

www.thenation.com/article/city-lights/

www.imdb.com/title/tt0021749/

www.imdb.com/chart/top?ref_=tt_awd