City Lights 1930 1931 1932 next previous
City Lights Clippings 251/387
National Board of Review, New York, March 1931.
Chaplin Cover, National Board of Review, March 1931, detail
„Hardly the flower-girl of Charlot‘s dreams“
Editorial content. „City Lights“ (...)
„Since Chaplin took to taking his time about turning
out pictures, a new film of his, even if it is just another Chaplin
film, is an event. For the years do not diminish this
little man‘s stature as the greatest clown in the world: anything
he does is exceptional and unique.
City Lights has been long awaited, with even more
than the usual amount of rumor and ballyhoo preceding it. A big
point has been made about its being a ,silent‘ film – silent
in the sense of having no spoken dialogue – a challenge to the
talkies, a crucial event in cinema history.
It turns out to be a delightful film, not Chaplin‘s best but far
ahead of any other funny man‘s best. Charlie is the
familiar Charlot, going through a well rounded out romance,
with the inevitable pathetic ending. It is full of hilarious
episodes and Chaplinesque wistfulnesses and braveries and
gentlenesses. There is nothing in it that quite approaches
the gorgeous pantomime of the sermon in The Pilgrim nor does
does it evoke such yells of laughter as some of The Gold
Rush. But it is a comedy such as no other man under the sun
could make. Judged by the Chaplin best it flags a bit:
it is almost too carefully done, and some of the gags have lost
their old element of surprise. Tumbling into a canal,
balancing unconsciously on the edge of a hole in the sidewalk,
getting paper streamers mixed up with spaghetti – one
foresees too clearly where the laughs are supposed to come
in such situations. There is the Chaplin touch, of course,
but it takes a pretty loyal Chaplin fan not to complain when two
years or more of production yielded so many worn-out
incidents.
As a challenge to the talkies it isn‘t very important.
There is a bit at the beginning that burlesques the kind of sound
that used to come from the screen while the mechanism
of sound reproduction was in its earliest state of imperfection.
For the rest there is no talk, but plenty of sound:
practically any sound that comes handy except that of human
voice. Sometime this arbitrary elimination of the voice
makes odd inconsistencies: why, for instance, do we hear the
orchestra that accompanies a man‘s singing, and not
hear the singing? The omission of dialogue, however, is barely
noticeable. No one ever seriously contended that Chaplin
needed to talk to make himself understood, and he is too skillful
a director not to make his actors as eloquent as necessary
without spoken words. The use of music as an accompaniment
of the action helps to cover the lack of dialogue, too –
though the choosing of music is not one of Chaplin‘s happiest
gifts. And by the way, does the credit line, ,Music
by Charlie Chaplin,‘ mean some of the music, or all of it? The
flower-girl theme has more than a striking resemblance
to the Violet-Seller song that Raquel Meller used to sing, and
some of the other tunes have an oddly familiar ring.
From the production standpoint this picture is probably
Chaplin‘s smoothest and handsomest – it loses
something of the oldtime dash by being so smooth and
handsome. The acting of the subsidiary roles is
excellent – and here again there is a refining, ironing-out
process at work. No more of these almost mythical
creatures with inhuman moustaches and terrifying eyebrows
and sledge-hammer physical prowess! Much of the
atmosphere that used to give Chaplin films an air of being
removed into a world of their own has been sacrificed
for what passes for naturalism in Hollywood.
Even while laughing, one is aware of a faint and uneasy
feeling that Chaplin has been pondering with more
than a bit of solemnity on conventional story values, and it has
led him further than ever into the realms of what is often
called pathetic. Unfortunately the pathos in City Lights is frequently
sentimental and mawkish.
Harry Myers and Hank Mann give comic performances
that would steal scene after scene from almost anybody
but Chaplin. Mr. Myers‘ ,drunk‘ is done with a fine frenzy that
doubles the fun of many episodes, and Mr. Mann
executes his bit in the prize-fight with the skill of a virtuoso.
Only the leading lady falls below Chaplin level: she
is hardly the flower-girl of Charlot‘s dreams.“
Drawing. „Chaplin Again (see page 5)“
Photo. „The place where Charlie saved the millionaire
from suicide.“
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City Lights 1930 1931 1932 next previous
