The film has all the elements of a classic Chaplin film. Slapstick comedy. Sight gags galore. But there's something different about it. It has the ability to get under your skin. For me, it has to do with the character Chaplin portrays. The film was made right at the beginning of the Great Depression, when most of the world was struggling with poverty and hunger. Here comes Chaplin, in his threadbare coat, clinging to the last vestiges of his dignity. He's tiny, clumsy, and poor. In several scenes, he flaunts authority--the police, the mayor, his boss. And he falls in love with a blind flower girl.
The heart of the whole film is the love story. The flower girl assumes the Tramp is a rich man, and the Tramp does nothing to dissuade her from this belief. She builds up an image of him in her mind. Handsome. Tall. Confident. Her knight on a white horse. The Tramp, through various circumstances, raises enough money to pay for an eye operation to restore her vision, and Chaplin eventually goes to prison.
At the end of the film, Chaplin, released from prison, meets the flower girl, who has been cured of her blindness. The flower girl doesn't recognize Chaplin until she hands him a flower and she touches his fingers. The resulting encounter is heartbreaking and glorious. Chaplin, who has kept his pride throughout the entire movie, shrivels under her gaze. He sees himself for what he truly is: a small, bedraggled ex-convict. He can see disappointment and love at the same time in her face. The vortex of emotions on Chaplin's face in the last frames of the film captures the vortex of emotions for an entire struggling world.
In the end, City Lights is all about hope for a better future.
Saint Marty can't think of anything greater than that.
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| Chaplin is the face of hope |
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