City Lights
Encyclopedia
City Lights is a 1931 American silent film
and romantic comedy-drama written by, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin
. It also has the leads Virginia Cherrill
and Harry Myers
. Although "talking" pictures
were on the rise since 1928, City Lights was immediately popular. Today, it is thought of as one of the highest accomplishments of Chaplin's prolific career. Although classified as a comedy, City Lights has an ending widely regarded as one of the most moving in cinema history.
is discovered sleeping on it. He is chased off by the crowd. Destitute and homeless he wanders the streets, getting tormented by two newsboys. He happens upon a blind Flower Girl (Virginia Cherrill
), and buys a flower. Just when she is about to give him his change, a man gets into a nearby car and drives away, making her think the Tramp has driven off. The Tramp doesn't correct her and slinks away. The Flower Girl returns home to her simple life with her grandmother (Florence Lee
).
That evening, the Tramp runs into a drunken millionaire (Harry Myers
) who is trying to commit suicide
. The Tramp convinces him to live, whereupon the millionaire showers him with gifts. They return to the millionaire's mansion, where the Tramp gets a change of clothes, and then go out on the town, where the Tramp inadvertently causes much havoc. The next morning, they return to the mansion. The Flower Girl walks by, so the Tramp asks the millionaire for money and then buys all her flowers and drives her home in the millionaire's Rolls-Royce
. She tells her grandmother about her wealthy suitor. When the Tramp returns to the mansion, the millionaire has sobered up and rudely dismisses him. But later that day, he meets the Tramp again while intoxicated, and invites him back for a wild party. The next morning, having sobered up again and planning to leave for a cruise, the millionaire once more tosses out the Tramp.
Returning to the Flower Girl's apartment, the Tramp spies her being attended by a doctor. He decides to take a job to earn money for her, and becomes a street-sweeper, managing to annoy his new coworker. Meanwhile, the grandmother receives a notice that she and the Flower Girl will be evicted if they cannot pay their back rent, but hides it and goes out to beg. The Tramp visits the Flower Girl on his lunch break, and sees an ad for an operation that cures blindness. He then finds the notice and promises the Girl he will pay it. But he returns to work late and is fired. Dejected, he passes a boxing venue, where a fighter convinces him to spar with him, throw the fight, and they'll split the prize money. But the fighter turns out to be a fugitive from justice and flees, leaving the Tramp to fight a no-nonsense replacement. Despite a valiant effort, the Tramp is thrashed. He meets the drunken millionaire again, who takes him to the mansion and gives him $1000 for the Girl. But two burglars sneak in and clobber the millionaire, and when he comes to, he accuses the Tramp of stealing. The Tramp narrowly escapes the police, delivers the money to the Girl, and promises to return, but he is picked up by the police and thrown in jail.
Several months later, he is wandering the streets again. Searching for the girl, he returns to her original street corner, but she is not there. With her sight restored, the girl has opened up a flower shop with her grandmother. When a rich man comes into the shop, the girl wonders if he is her mysterious benefactor. The Tramp, in ragged clothes and tormented by the same newsboys, suddenly finds himself staring at her through the window. She jokes to her colleague that she has "made a conquest". Seeing a flower falling apart in his hand, the girl offers him one of hers and a coin. The Tramp begins to leave, then reaches for the flower. The girl takes hold of his hand to place the coin in it and, feeling him, she realizes who he is. "You?" she says, and he nods, asking, "You can see now?" She replies, "Yes, I can see now" and holds his hand to her heart. The film closes on Chaplin smiling back at her.
The Tramp, in every scene, barely escapes disaster of which he is completely unaware. Via the comic scenes, the Tramp is shown to be short, dirty and sloppy. His life is contrasted with good food, clean clothing, a large house, and comfortable and clean chairs, couches and beds. He is shown to be fearful of looking at or even dreaming of a better life.
In each encounter with the blind girl, she unknowingly manages to bash the Tramp, throwing water in his face, dropping a flower pot on his head etc. He also shows the hardships and many times unbearable conditions of the lower class, via comedy, when the Tramp chooses to sweep the streets or sets himself up in the boxing ring. In the final scene, he happens to look in to the flower store, in a clear analogy to part of the opening scene where he is afraid to peer at the model doll of a woman in a dress shop.
Slapstick is also used to show how the Tramp unknowingly insults and sometimes openly attacks various institutions and people, from mocking the mayor and police to bashing the stuck up butler or the snoopy neighbor.
), Chaplin could still conceive City Lights as a silent film. Technically the film was a crossover, as its soundtrack had synchronized music, sound effects, and some unintelligible sounds that copied speech pattern films. The dialogue was presented on intertitles.
As a filmmaker, Chaplin was known for being a perfectionist; he was notable for doing many more "takes
" than other directors at the time. At one point he fired Virginia Cherrill and began re-filming with Georgia Hale
, Chaplin's co-star in The Gold Rush
. This proved too expensive, so he re-hired Cherrill to finish City Lights. (Approximately seven minutes of test footage of Hale survives and is included on the DVD release; excerpts were first seen in the documentary Unknown Chaplin
along with an unused opening sequence from the film.) When Chaplin completed the film, silent films had become generally unpopular. But City Lights was one of the great financial and artistic successes of Chaplin's career, and it was his personal favorite of his films. Especially fond of the final scene, he said, "[I]n City Lights just the last scene … I’m not acting …. Almost apologetic, standing outside myself and looking … It’s a beautiful scene, beautiful, and because it isn’t over-acted."
of City Lights includes several themes from popular melodies, with other melodies composed by Chaplin and arranged and orchestrated by Arthur Johnston
and Alfred Newman
. The main theme used as a leit motif for the blind flower girl is the song La Violetera (Who’ll buy my Violets) from Spanish composer José Padilla
. Chaplin unsuccessfully tried to secure the original song performer Raquel Meller
in the lead role, but used her song anyway as a major theme. Chaplin lost a lawsuit to Padilla (which took place in Paris, where Padilla lived) for not crediting him.
Some modern editions released for video include a new recording by Carl Davis
.
Chaplin was nervous about reception of the film because by this time, silent films were becoming obsolete; Hollywood switched to sound films by the end of 1929. The film was enthusiastically received by Depression
-era audiences, earning $5 million during its initial release, and became one of Chaplin's most financially successful and critically acclaimed works. In 1949, the critic James Agee
wrote in Life
magazine, that the final scene was the "greatest single piece of acting ever committed to celluloid." The film was re-released in 1950.
Several well-known directors have praised City Lights. Orson Welles
said it was his favorite film. In a 1963 interview in the American magazine Cinema, Stanley Kubrick
rated City Lights as fifth among his top ten films. In 1972, the renowned Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky
placed City Lights as fifth among this top ten and said of Chaplin, "He is the only person to have gone down into cinematic history without any shadow of a doubt. The films he left behind can never grow old."
George Bernard Shaw
called Chaplin "the only genius to come out of the movie industry". Celebrated Italian director Federico Fellini
often praised this film and his Nights of Cabiria
refers to it. In the 2003 documentary Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin, Woody Allen
said it was Chaplin's best picture. Allen is said to have based the final scene of his 1979 film Manhattan
on the final scene of City Lights.
In 1992, the Library of Congress
selected City Lights for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." In 2007, the American Film Institute
's tenth anniversary edition of "100 Years...100 Movies" ranked City Lights as the eleventh greatest American film of all time.
In 1952, Sight and Sound magazine issued the results of its first poll for "The Best Films of All Time" and City Lights was voted #2, after Vittorio DeSica's Bicycle Thieves
. In 2002, City Lights ranked 45th on the critics' list. That same year, directors were polled separately and ranked the film as 19th overall.
In June 2008, AFI revealed its "10 Top 10"
, the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres, from a poll of more than 1500 people in the creative community. City Lights was voted the best film in the romantic comedy genre.
The film has been studied and written about by American and international film critics and scholars. For example, French experimental musician and film critic Michel Chion
has written an analysis of City Lights, published as Les Lumières de la ville. Slavoj Žižek
used the film as a primary example in his essay, "Why Does a Letter Always Arrive at Its Destination?" (first chapter in Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out).
Charles Silver, Curator of Film at the Museum of Modern Art
, states that the film is so highly regarded because it brought forth a new level of lyrical romanticism that did not appear in Chaplin's earlier works. He adds that like all romanticism, it is based in the denial of the real world around it. When the film premiered, Chaplin was much older, he was in the midst of another round of legal battles with former spouse Lita Grey and the economic and political climate of the world had changed. Chaplin uses The Girl's blindness to remind The Tramp of precarious nature of Romanticism in the real world as she unknowingly assaults him multiple times.
Film.com critic Eric D. Snyder says that by 1931, most Hollywood filmmakers either embraced talking pictures, resigned themselves to their inevitability or just gave up making movies, yet Chaplin held firm with his vision in this project. He also notes that few in Hollywood had the clout to make a silent film at that late date, let alone do it well. One reason was that Chaplin knew The Tramp could not be adapted to talking movies and still work.
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
and romantic comedy-drama written by, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
. It also has the leads Virginia Cherrill
Virginia Cherrill
Virginia Cherrill was an American actress best known for her role as the blind flower girl in Charlie Chaplin's City Lights...
and Harry Myers
Harry Myers
Harry C. Myers , sometimes credited as Henry Myers, was an American film actor and director. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and died in Hollywood, California from pneumonia...
. Although "talking" pictures
Sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
were on the rise since 1928, City Lights was immediately popular. Today, it is thought of as one of the highest accomplishments of Chaplin's prolific career. Although classified as a comedy, City Lights has an ending widely regarded as one of the most moving in cinema history.
Plot
The officials of a city are dedicating a new statue, but when it is unveiled, Chaplin's TrampThe Tramp
The Tramp, also known as The Little Tramp was Charlie Chaplin's most memorable on-screen character, a recognized icon of world cinema most dominant during the silent film era....
is discovered sleeping on it. He is chased off by the crowd. Destitute and homeless he wanders the streets, getting tormented by two newsboys. He happens upon a blind Flower Girl (Virginia Cherrill
Virginia Cherrill
Virginia Cherrill was an American actress best known for her role as the blind flower girl in Charlie Chaplin's City Lights...
), and buys a flower. Just when she is about to give him his change, a man gets into a nearby car and drives away, making her think the Tramp has driven off. The Tramp doesn't correct her and slinks away. The Flower Girl returns home to her simple life with her grandmother (Florence Lee
Florence Lee
Florence Lee was an American actress of the silent era. She appeared in 99 films between 1911 and 1931.She was born in Jamaica, Vermont and died in Hollywood, California at the age of 104.-Selected filmography:...
).
That evening, the Tramp runs into a drunken millionaire (Harry Myers
Harry Myers
Harry C. Myers , sometimes credited as Henry Myers, was an American film actor and director. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and died in Hollywood, California from pneumonia...
) who is trying to commit suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
. The Tramp convinces him to live, whereupon the millionaire showers him with gifts. They return to the millionaire's mansion, where the Tramp gets a change of clothes, and then go out on the town, where the Tramp inadvertently causes much havoc. The next morning, they return to the mansion. The Flower Girl walks by, so the Tramp asks the millionaire for money and then buys all her flowers and drives her home in the millionaire's Rolls-Royce
Rolls-Royce Limited
Rolls-Royce Limited was a renowned British car and, from 1914 on, aero-engine manufacturing company founded by Charles Stewart Rolls and Henry Royce on 15 March 1906 as the result of a partnership formed in 1904....
. She tells her grandmother about her wealthy suitor. When the Tramp returns to the mansion, the millionaire has sobered up and rudely dismisses him. But later that day, he meets the Tramp again while intoxicated, and invites him back for a wild party. The next morning, having sobered up again and planning to leave for a cruise, the millionaire once more tosses out the Tramp.
Returning to the Flower Girl's apartment, the Tramp spies her being attended by a doctor. He decides to take a job to earn money for her, and becomes a street-sweeper, managing to annoy his new coworker. Meanwhile, the grandmother receives a notice that she and the Flower Girl will be evicted if they cannot pay their back rent, but hides it and goes out to beg. The Tramp visits the Flower Girl on his lunch break, and sees an ad for an operation that cures blindness. He then finds the notice and promises the Girl he will pay it. But he returns to work late and is fired. Dejected, he passes a boxing venue, where a fighter convinces him to spar with him, throw the fight, and they'll split the prize money. But the fighter turns out to be a fugitive from justice and flees, leaving the Tramp to fight a no-nonsense replacement. Despite a valiant effort, the Tramp is thrashed. He meets the drunken millionaire again, who takes him to the mansion and gives him $1000 for the Girl. But two burglars sneak in and clobber the millionaire, and when he comes to, he accuses the Tramp of stealing. The Tramp narrowly escapes the police, delivers the money to the Girl, and promises to return, but he is picked up by the police and thrown in jail.
Several months later, he is wandering the streets again. Searching for the girl, he returns to her original street corner, but she is not there. With her sight restored, the girl has opened up a flower shop with her grandmother. When a rich man comes into the shop, the girl wonders if he is her mysterious benefactor. The Tramp, in ragged clothes and tormented by the same newsboys, suddenly finds himself staring at her through the window. She jokes to her colleague that she has "made a conquest". Seeing a flower falling apart in his hand, the girl offers him one of hers and a coin. The Tramp begins to leave, then reaches for the flower. The girl takes hold of his hand to place the coin in it and, feeling him, she realizes who he is. "You?" she says, and he nods, asking, "You can see now?" She replies, "Yes, I can see now" and holds his hand to her heart. The film closes on Chaplin smiling back at her.
Slapstick
As in other Chaplin movies, each scene has an element of slapstick in it, using the comic scenes in a symbolic way. The opening scene uses funny sounds to depict the important mayor and his wife who are smiling and talking emphatically before the crowd. The revelation of the monument before the acting crowd, is actually the revelation of the tramp, the well-known Charlie Chaplin, before the movie-going crowd.The Tramp, in every scene, barely escapes disaster of which he is completely unaware. Via the comic scenes, the Tramp is shown to be short, dirty and sloppy. His life is contrasted with good food, clean clothing, a large house, and comfortable and clean chairs, couches and beds. He is shown to be fearful of looking at or even dreaming of a better life.
In each encounter with the blind girl, she unknowingly manages to bash the Tramp, throwing water in his face, dropping a flower pot on his head etc. He also shows the hardships and many times unbearable conditions of the lower class, via comedy, when the Tramp chooses to sweep the streets or sets himself up in the boxing ring. In the final scene, he happens to look in to the flower store, in a clear analogy to part of the opening scene where he is afraid to peer at the model doll of a woman in a dress shop.
Slapstick is also used to show how the Tramp unknowingly insults and sometimes openly attacks various institutions and people, from mocking the mayor and police to bashing the stuck up butler or the snoopy neighbor.
Cast
- Charlie ChaplinCharlie ChaplinSir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
as A Tramp - Virginia CherrillVirginia CherrillVirginia Cherrill was an American actress best known for her role as the blind flower girl in Charlie Chaplin's City Lights...
as A Blind Girl - Florence LeeFlorence LeeFlorence Lee was an American actress of the silent era. She appeared in 99 films between 1911 and 1931.She was born in Jamaica, Vermont and died in Hollywood, California at the age of 104.-Selected filmography:...
as The Blind Girl's Grandmother - Harry MyersHarry MyersHarry C. Myers , sometimes credited as Henry Myers, was an American film actor and director. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and died in Hollywood, California from pneumonia...
as An Eccentric Millionaire - Al Ernest GarciaAl Ernest GarciaAl Ernest Garcia was an American silent film actor. He starred with Charlie Chaplin in films such as The Circus.-Filmography:...
as His Butler (as Allan Garcia) - Hank MannHank MannHank Mann was a comedian and silent screen star who is best known as the last surviving member of the Keystone Cops. According to fellow actor and original member of the ensemble Edgar Kennedy, Mann was the originator of the idea for the Keysotne Cops...
as A Prizefighter - Robert ParrishRobert ParrishRobert R. Parrish was an American actor, film editor, film director, and writer. He received an Academy Award for Film Editing for the 1947 film, Body and Soul....
as Newsboy - Henry BergmanHenry BergmanHenry Bergman was an American actor of stage and film, known for his long association with Charlie Chaplin....
as Mayor and Man in Basement - Albert AustinAlbert AustinAlbert Austin was an actor, film star, director and script writer, noted mainly for his work in Charlie Chaplin films. He was the brother of actor William Austin....
as Street Sweeper - Jean HarlowJean HarlowJean Harlow was an American film actress and sex symbol of the 1930s. Known as the "Blonde Bombshell" and the "Platinum Blonde" , Harlow was ranked as one of the greatest movie stars of all time by the American Film Institute...
Uncredited Extra
Production
Chaplin's feature The Circus, released in 1928, was his last film before the motion picture industry embraced sound recording and brought the silent movie era to a close. As his own producer and distributor (part owner of United ArtistsUnited Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
), Chaplin could still conceive City Lights as a silent film. Technically the film was a crossover, as its soundtrack had synchronized music, sound effects, and some unintelligible sounds that copied speech pattern films. The dialogue was presented on intertitles.
As a filmmaker, Chaplin was known for being a perfectionist; he was notable for doing many more "takes
Takes
Takes is the third studio album by British singer/songwriter Adem. It is a covers album, consisting primarily of covers of 90s pop/alternative tracks.-Track listing:...
" than other directors at the time. At one point he fired Virginia Cherrill and began re-filming with Georgia Hale
Georgia Hale
Georgia Hale was an actress of the silent movie era.-Career:Georgia Theodora Hale was Miss Chicago 1922 and competed in the Miss America Pageant...
, Chaplin's co-star in The Gold Rush
The Gold Rush
The Gold Rush is a 1925 silent film comedy written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin in his Little Tramp role. The film also stars Georgia Hale, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Henry Bergman, Malcolm Waite....
. This proved too expensive, so he re-hired Cherrill to finish City Lights. (Approximately seven minutes of test footage of Hale survives and is included on the DVD release; excerpts were first seen in the documentary Unknown Chaplin
Unknown Chaplin
Unknown Chaplin is an acclaimed three-part 1983 British television documentary about the career and the methods of the film luminary Charles Chaplin using previously unseen film for illustration....
along with an unused opening sequence from the film.) When Chaplin completed the film, silent films had become generally unpopular. But City Lights was one of the great financial and artistic successes of Chaplin's career, and it was his personal favorite of his films. Especially fond of the final scene, he said, "[I]n City Lights just the last scene … I’m not acting …. Almost apologetic, standing outside myself and looking … It’s a beautiful scene, beautiful, and because it isn’t over-acted."
Music
The film scoreFilm score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
of City Lights includes several themes from popular melodies, with other melodies composed by Chaplin and arranged and orchestrated by Arthur Johnston
Arthur Johnston (composer)
Arthur Johnston was a composer known for such works as “Mandy, Make Up Your Mind,” "Pennies From Heaven," and many others...
and Alfred Newman
Alfred Newman
Alfred Newman was an American composer, arranger, and conductor of music for films.In a career which spanned over forty years, Newman composed music for over two hundred films. He was one of the most respected film score composers of his time, and is today regarded as one of the greatest...
. The main theme used as a leit motif for the blind flower girl is the song La Violetera (Who’ll buy my Violets) from Spanish composer José Padilla
José Padilla (composer)
José Padilla Sánchez, , popularly known as Maestro Padilla was a famous Spanish composer and pianist...
. Chaplin unsuccessfully tried to secure the original song performer Raquel Meller
Raquel Meller
Raquel Meller , born Francisca Marqués López, was a Spanish cuplé and tonadilla singer. She was an international star in the 1920s and 1930s, appearing in several films and touring Europe and the Americas...
in the lead role, but used her song anyway as a major theme. Chaplin lost a lawsuit to Padilla (which took place in Paris, where Padilla lived) for not crediting him.
Some modern editions released for video include a new recording by Carl Davis
Carl Davis
Carl Davis CBE is an American born conductor and composer who has made his home in the UK since 1961. In 1970 he married the English actress Jean Boht....
.
Reception
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
-era audiences, earning $5 million during its initial release, and became one of Chaplin's most financially successful and critically acclaimed works. In 1949, the critic James Agee
James Agee
James Rufus Agee was an American author, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, he was one of the most influential film critics in the U.S...
wrote in Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
magazine, that the final scene was the "greatest single piece of acting ever committed to celluloid." The film was re-released in 1950.
Several well-known directors have praised City Lights. Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
said it was his favorite film. In a 1963 interview in the American magazine Cinema, Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
rated City Lights as fifth among his top ten films. In 1972, the renowned Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky was a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director, widely regarded as one of the finest filmmakers of the 20th century....
placed City Lights as fifth among this top ten and said of Chaplin, "He is the only person to have gone down into cinematic history without any shadow of a doubt. The films he left behind can never grow old."
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
called Chaplin "the only genius to come out of the movie industry". Celebrated Italian director Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century...
often praised this film and his Nights of Cabiria
Nights of Cabiria
Nights of Cabiria is a 1957 Italian film directed by Federico Fellini. Fellini's wife, Giulietta Masina, plays Cabiria Ceccarelli, a feisty but naive prostitute in Ostia, then a seedy section of Rome...
refers to it. In the 2003 documentary Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin, Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
said it was Chaplin's best picture. Allen is said to have based the final scene of his 1979 film Manhattan
Manhattan (film)
Manhattan is a 1979 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Woody Allen about a twice-divorced 42-year-old comedy writer who dates a 17-year-old girl before eventually falling in love with his best friend's mistress...
on the final scene of City Lights.
In 1992, the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
selected City Lights for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." In 2007, the American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
's tenth anniversary edition of "100 Years...100 Movies" ranked City Lights as the eleventh greatest American film of all time.
In 1952, Sight and Sound magazine issued the results of its first poll for "The Best Films of All Time" and City Lights was voted #2, after Vittorio DeSica's Bicycle Thieves
Bicycle Thieves
Bicycle Thieves , also known as The Bicycle Thief, is a 1948 Italian neorealist film directed by Vittorio De Sica. It tells the story of a poor man searching the streets of Rome for his stolen bicycle, which he needs to be able to work. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Luigi...
. In 2002, City Lights ranked 45th on the critics' list. That same year, directors were polled separately and ranked the film as 19th overall.
In June 2008, AFI revealed its "10 Top 10"
AFI's 10 Top 10
AFI's 10 Top 10 honors the ten greatest American films in ten classic film genres. Presented by the American Film Institute , the lists were unveiled on a television special broadcast by CBS on June 17, 2008....
, the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres, from a poll of more than 1500 people in the creative community. City Lights was voted the best film in the romantic comedy genre.
The film has been studied and written about by American and international film critics and scholars. For example, French experimental musician and film critic Michel Chion
Michel Chion
Michel Chion born in 1947 in Creil, France, is a composer of experimental music. He teaches at several institutions within France and currently holds the post of Associate Professor at the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle where he is a theoretician and teacher of audio-visual...
has written an analysis of City Lights, published as Les Lumières de la ville. Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....
used the film as a primary example in his essay, "Why Does a Letter Always Arrive at Its Destination?" (first chapter in Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out).
Charles Silver, Curator of Film at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, states that the film is so highly regarded because it brought forth a new level of lyrical romanticism that did not appear in Chaplin's earlier works. He adds that like all romanticism, it is based in the denial of the real world around it. When the film premiered, Chaplin was much older, he was in the midst of another round of legal battles with former spouse Lita Grey and the economic and political climate of the world had changed. Chaplin uses The Girl's blindness to remind The Tramp of precarious nature of Romanticism in the real world as she unknowingly assaults him multiple times.
Film.com critic Eric D. Snyder says that by 1931, most Hollywood filmmakers either embraced talking pictures, resigned themselves to their inevitability or just gave up making movies, yet Chaplin held firm with his vision in this project. He also notes that few in Hollywood had the clout to make a silent film at that late date, let alone do it well. One reason was that Chaplin knew The Tramp could not be adapted to talking movies and still work.
American Film Institute recognition
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 MoviesAFI's 100 Years... 100 MoviesThe first of the AFI 100 Years… series of cinematic milestones, AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies is a list of the 100 best American movies, as determined by the American Film Institute from a poll of more than 1,500 artists and leaders in the film industry who chose from a list of 400 nominated movies...
#76 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 PassionsAFI's 100 Years... 100 PassionsPart of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years…100 Passions is a list of the top 100 greatest love stories in American cinema. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute on June 11, 2002, in a CBS television special hosted by American film and TV actress Candice Bergen.-The...
#10 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and VillainsAFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and VillainsAFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains is a list of the 100 greatest screen characters chosen by American Film Institute in June 2003. It is part of the AFI 100 Years… series. The series was first presented in a CBS special hosted by Arnold Schwarzenegger...
:- The TrampThe TrampThe Tramp, also known as The Little Tramp was Charlie Chaplin's most memorable on-screen character, a recognized icon of world cinema most dominant during the silent film era....
, Hero #38
- The Tramp
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 LaughsAFI's 100 Years... 100 LaughsPart of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years…100 Laughs is a list of the top 100 funniest movies in American cinema. A wide variety of comedies were nominated for the distinction that included slapstick comedy, screwball comedy, romantic comedy, satire, black comedy, musical comedy, comedy of...
#38 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 CheersAFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers100 Years…100 Cheers: America's Most Inspiring Movies is a list of the most inspiring films as determined by the American Film Institute. It is part of the AFI 100 Years… series, which has been compiling lists of the greatest films of all time in various categories since 1998...
#33 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) #11
- AFI's 10 Top 10AFI's 10 Top 10AFI's 10 Top 10 honors the ten greatest American films in ten classic film genres. Presented by the American Film Institute , the lists were unveiled on a television special broadcast by CBS on June 17, 2008....
#1 Romantic Comedy
External links
- City Lights, Clown Ministry