Dir. Charlie Chaplin
City Lights is well-regarded as one of, as the man is so prolific, Chaplin's masterpieces. It's been over 80 years since it's release and it's hilarious to this day, and utterly charming. Most of this is due to Chaplin's character of The Tramp, who is introduced so brilliantly. As a crowd watches the unveiling of a new statue, a stately woman pulls the ribbon, and the sheet is pulled up, revealing the Tramp:
You can see the scene in all glory here. The comic timing is superb, and we know exactly what sort of man this is within the first few seconds of seeing him. This is a man who sleeps on a monumental statue with no second thought, and then manages to get himself ensnared on the way down, tipping his hat to the statues for being so rude.
Later in the film, the Tramp and his new drunk millionaire friend go for a night out on the town. In the club he, in typical Chaplin style, falls prey to many moments of slapstick. You can see the scene here. He slips on the dance-floor, misses his seat many times, and is unable to light is cigar repeatedly. Typing these moments out really doesn't do them justice. In the film they are delightful to watch, as they come so quickly, and each are so inventive it's astounding there's so much clever visual comedy in one film.
The two are served spaghetti, and we can already see what's coming. The revelers shoot off confetti to celebrate a good night out on the town, A strand of confetti falls into the tramp's meal, and of course, he end up eating the strand of confetti. Chaplin keeps going, eating a remarkable amount of confetti! He stands, following the strand, like a fish in a tank. He nearly eats the whole thing before his friend notices and removes the rest. In the world of City Lights, and the world of the tramp, he won't wonder why the spaghetti tastes strange or seems to be reaching into the roof, he'll just eat it!
Out of the context of the film, what the regular spaghetti does is display to us the cross-over between the silent era of film and the new 'talkies'. There are sound effects interspersed throughout the film, particularly in the whistle scene, another bit of great audio comedy. as the tramp sucks the spaghetti, we get a slide-whistle noise. You know the one. Why? Because of City Lights, and other films and cartoons of this era. It seems obvious and antiquated to us as a modern viewer, but at the time this use of sound effects in film was brand new, and frankly, funny! This is likely the best use of it in film, whereas I can unequivocally say that the use of it in the car-flip scene in The Man With a Golden Gun (1974) is the absolute nadir of the effect, ruining one of the greatest stunts in film history. You can see how awful it is here.
But in City Lights, it's funny, and continues to be funny to this day, despite our culture dampening it's original comedic value - see Seinfeld is Unfunny. Chaplin is so good at the physical comedy, so suited to the silent films, that this use of audio could have gone far worse. But here, it's inventive, funny, and matches the visual comedy of the confetti spaghetti. What we have here is the direct crossover of visual and audio comedy in film, in a Chaplin film no less. And for that reason, it deserves a mention on this blog. As i do with all of the films here, I urge you to give it a watch. If you've never seen a silent film, watch City Lights. If you've never seen a Chaplin film, watch City Lights. And most importantly, if you want to laugh, watch City Lights.
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