City Lights (1931)

Staring Charlie Chaplin and Virginia Cherrill
Produced, directed and written by Charlie Chaplin
With music by Charlie Chaplin
Company: Charles Chaplin Productions, released through United Artists.

City Lights is arguably one of the most important works of US film making. It is on most lists of "best films." And it should be. In my opinion, although some of Chaplin's best scenes are in other movies, taken overall this is his best. Of course, the plot is very unrealistic. Despite this, the movie manages to be at the same time very funny and very serious.

The film is essentially a series of comic set pieces (there's The Tramp on the Statues, the Street Elevator, The Millionaire's Drowning... you get the idea). Each of these is a masterpiece of comedy, each focusing largely on physical humor and timing. Almost all of these scenes are still funny today, almost a century after they were filmed. However, the story thread that ties these humorous scenes together is both pithy and serious. Taken together, they show the struggle of The Tramp and The Blind Girl against a heartless and inimical world. Importantly, it's a world in which each individual, except The Tramp, seems to be entirely out for themselves, and entirely isolated. It's a world in which, not only do the rich show no concern for the poor but there is no class solidarity either. No one is more hostile to The Tramp than the Newsboys (who may well themselves become tramps) or the Butler.

There are, of course, three particularly noteworthy characters in the film: The Millionaire, The Tramp, and The Flower Girl. Each of them is worth considering for a moment.

The Millionaire is not intended as a sympathetic character. He is probably representative of broader society. He is profoundly unhappy and unsympathetic when sober. His wife has left him, he has no friends, and he is unable to see in the sense both of being unable to recognize The Tramp and unable to see the nature of his society. It's only when he is drunk that he has a heart. The drunk Millionaire is self-centered but also able to love and generous to a fault. However, it's worth noting that when we leave The Millionaire, he is both sober and cruel.

The Tramp is Chaplin's persistent character. Chaplin first plays The Tramp in 1915 and continues to do so until Modern Times in 1936. The Tramp is an everyman character. He is representative of the poor, the oppressed, the immigrant, the stranger. The Tramp is essentially good...he has heart. However, note that although The Tramp is good, he's not "goody-goody." There are many cases, both in this movie and in others, where The Tramp, lies, cheats, engages in petty theft, is a little lewd, does things that are unsympathetic, and so on. This is important: The Tramp is just good...he's not perfect. And, after all, this movie centers around a deceit by The Tramp: he pretends he's a millionaire for the Flower Girl. But, The Tramp sees...

The Flower Girl, is, of course, literally blind. Her character is not particularly well developed (and that's important). She's a naif. She imagines she is being courted by a millionaire who is solicitous, kind, and has her interests at heart. She is both literally blind, and blind to the nature of the society in which she lives...millionaires don't ordinarily show such affection for impoverished flower sellers. Because she doesn't see the nature of her society, she seems to equate goodness with wealth.

Dramatically, the center of the movie is the very last scene. The Flower Girl, now cured of her physical blindness, tends her shop imagining the return of her mysterious benefactor. She looks for him, unsuccessfully, among the shop's wealthy clientele. But when she holds The Tramp's hand, offering him a coin, she realizes that it is him. In the last exchange of the movie, The Tramp observes that she can see and she returns his phrase, saying "Yes, I can see." But, in this exchange, the meaning of "see" is ambiguous. She can certainly see physically. Can she see morally as well? Is there any place in the world for The Tramp and the now prosperous Flower Girl?

Chaplin was a demanding director, but was (usually) fiercely loyal to the actors he worked with. They often appeared in many of his films. This film includes one of the most famous sequences in Hollywood history, the scene in which The Tramp first meets The Flower Girl. The scene solves a difficult narrative problem: how is it that The Flower Girl can mistake The Tramp for a millionaire? It took Chaplin 342 takes (in five different attempts over a two year period) to get this scene the way he wanted it. You can see a well narrated three minute sequence of Chaplin directing one of the takes of this sequence here (not required).

Of particular note is that Chaplin composed and arranged all of the music for City Lights. Though he had contributed music to earlier films, this was his first complete score. In it, he combines wholly original work with arrangements of traditional and current songs (the most important of these was "La Violetera" by the Spanish composer Jose Padilla, which is the main theme associated with the Flower Girl. Padilla sued Chaplin for not properly crediting him and won). Nonetheless, the score is an extraordinary triumph. At the film's opening in Los Angeles, it was played by a live orchestra.

Albert Einstein was Chaplin's guest at the premier. Einstein and Chaplin had a close but relatively short lived friendship in the early 30s and Einstein had been a guest at Chaplin's house. There is a famous quote, probably apocryphal, that comes from the premier of City Lights. Supposedly, when Chaplin and Einstein arrived the crowd went wild. Chaplin (or maybe Einstein's son at a totally different occasion) said: "They're cheering us both. You because nobody understands you, and me because everybody understands me." Whether anyone said it or not, there's a certain amount of truth there.

Postscript: Four notes on the nightclub scene. One of the first things that The Millionaire does is take The Tramp to a nightclub. It's an interesting scene, in part for how much things have changed since 1931, when the film came out. First of all, Prohibition was not repealed until 1933, so the location is actually an illegal speakeasy. Second, one of the gags (and one that I particularly liked) is The Tramp eating spaghetti. Today, there isn't anything much more American than spaghetti, but in 1931, it was still a little exotic. It was introduced in the 1890s. By the early 30s it was served in many restaurants in larger cities but it wasn't something you were likely to have at home unless you came from an Italian family. Lots of foods we take for granted didn't exist for most Americans in 1931. Pizza, for example, was completely unknown to most Americans until after the Second World War. In the mid-20th century a pizza was a tomato pie with some cheese. Today, about one third of the total cheese production of the US gaoes into mozzarella for pizza and a pizza is a cheese pie with a little tomato. Third, part way through the scene two dancers appear. The man throws the woman violently to the floor. The Tramp immediately gets to his feet takes off his jacket and tries to fight the man. This was funny because a 1931 audience would have understood that the couple are performers and they are doing a Danse Apache or Apache Tango. This was a type of performance dance that originated in France and was popular in the first half of the 20th century. In these dances the male partner strangled the female partner and threw her around while they both performed acrobatic dance steps. You can see a more complete example here from the 1935 movie Charlie Chan in Paris. The performance is revolting by current day standards but was considered very sophisticated in the 1930s. And lastly, when The Tramp is handed a menu, he immediately rises to his feet to sing. The joke, of course, is that The Tramp frequently seeks his meals at religious organizations such as The Salvation Army where rising to pray or sing religious songs before meals was required. That hasn't changed so much in the modern world. We still leave much of our social welfare services in the hands of religious organizations.

Staring:

Virginia Cherrill (1908-1996) (The Flower Girl). Discovered by Chaplin when he sat next to her at a boxing match. Her only work with Chaplin was City Lights. Chaplin got along well with most of his actors, but not Cherrill. She fought with him and at one point was fired from the film.  This might have been related to the fact that Cherrill was a friend of William Randolph Hearst and his partner Marion Davies (Hearst was newspaper publisher and one of the wealthiest and most famous people in California. Citizen Kane is about Hearst and Davies. The corporation Hearst founded, now Hearst Communications, remains one of the most powerful media companies in the US.). So Cherrill took more liberties and had more power than most Chaplin actors. Cherrill appeared in several movies after City Lights but almost never as a top billed star. During this era she was briefly married to fellow star Cary Grant (1904-1986) but she left both him and the movie industry. She moved to England and in 1937 married George Child-Villiers, 9th Earl of Jersey (1910-1998). After she and Child-Villiers divorced in 1946, she married Florian Kazimierz Martini (1915-2001), a Polish WWII aviator who worked for Lockheed Martin. She and Martini remained together until her death.

Florence Lee (1858-1962), (The Grandmother) appeared in 99 films starting in 1911 but City Lights was her last.

Harry Myers (1882-1938) (The Millionaire) was a director in the early movies but by 1917 had moved primarily to acting. He appeared in 245 films between 1908 and 1938. Henry Clive (1883-1960), who was the production designer for the film, was originally slated to play the millionaire but he wouldn't jump into the cold water (some sources say Clive had a cold, others that he just didn't want to). Chaplin fired him immediately and he was replaced by Myers. Myers had an extensive film acting career that went back to 1909.

Al Ernest Garcia (1887-1938) (The Butler) Was part of Chaplin's regular company. He was also the President of Electro Steel in Modern Times, the Ringmaster in The Circus and a prospector in The Gold Rush and played in several Chaplin short films as well as having an extensive career unrelated to Chaplin (he appeared in well over 100 films). Garcia was an early Mexican-American film star. He was born in San Francisco to parents from Mexico. He frequently took Mexican/Mexican-American type cast roles (but not for Chaplin) and appeared in Spanish language movies as well.

Hank Mann (1887-1971) (The Prizefighter), Was one of the original Keystone Cops (and, late in life, the last surviver of them) and appeared in many other Keystone pictures including Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life numerous Fatty and Mabel pictures and some with Chaplin. He was also in Modern Times and The Great Dictator. He continued to play very small parts in movies until 1959 ultimately appearing in 421 films (many uncredited). He had a brief career in makeup after this but ended up as an apartment manager.

Victor Alexander (b. 1897). (The Black Boxer). Alexander is significant only because he is one of the very few Black people to appear in the films shown in this class and only the second Black character appearing in a Chaplin film. Chaplin makes a strong statement about race in the "Look Up Hannah" speech from The Great Dictator (1940) and, his treatment of a Black character in City Lights is interesting. The first thing to say is so obvious that it's easy to miss. For the most part, the Black Boxer is a normal character. Almost all Black roles in movies made in this era for white audiences are servants of one kind or another. They play roles in which they are shown to be clearly subservient to whites. Alexander's Black Boxer loses his fight but there is no indication that he is any different from the white boxers. He's treated identically to the others. That's revolutionary in 1931, but it's easy for us to miss how important that is. Chaplin does make the character superstitious, a cliché African-American trait from films of this era. However, rather than making fun of the character's superstitions, Chaplin's Tramp responds by getting all the horse shoe and rabbit's foot he can. Of course the fights don't turn out so well for either character. Victor Alexander was the real-life boxer, Vic Alexander. He also had a small, uncredited role in Mutiny Ahead a minor movie of 1935. I can find no trace of him after that.

Roger Ebert's 1997 Review of City Lights (required)

Mordaunt Hall's 1931 Review of City Lights (not required)

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