Is CITY LIGHTS a great comedy?

[Richard M Roberts]

Jobyna Ralston smokes any of Chaplin's ladies.

DBP

Except perhaps, Paulette Goddard. A Classic babe, with a pretty strong-willed personality whose characters in both MODERN TIMES and THE GREAT DICTATOR show more spirit than Chaplin's other heroines. Then again, Chaplin wasn't into allowing his leading ladies that much stake in his comedies if could get away with it.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Matt Barry]

Come on Fellas!
The opening surprise appearance in the park, the suicide attempt, the night on the town (in fact, all of the scenes involving the millionaire) the boxing match and my favorite gag in the film; trolling for cigarette butts while driving a limousine. It is a comedy. All of the so-called drama is merely Chaplin treating the romance portion of the film a bit more seriously than Wheeler & Woolsey would but Charlie had been doing this since THE BANK (1915).

Gary J.

I disagree.

CITY LIGHTS isn't a bit more serious.... it's a hell of a lot more serious.

The scenes with the millionaire are there to set up dramatic tension later in the film -- and indeed leads to the Tramp's ending up with a rather unfunny term in jail -- while the fight sequence is undercut by the knowledge the Tramp MUST have that money (especially if one has the knowledge of what's coming).

As for the rest, if CITY LIGHTS was meant to be comedy, it is WOEFULLY thin stuff for three years work.
If anything, the comic bits work as comedy RELIEF for the dramatics, not as the center of the story.

Compare this with THE KID, THE GOLD RUSH, THE CIRCUS, Lloyd's THE KID BROTHER, or Keaton's OUR HOSPITALITY, where the secondary dramatics are there to create the comic situations, and actually support the comedy. In CITY LIGHTS, the reverse is true.

But let me be more blunt.
TWO TARS is a GREAT comedy.
THE BOAT is a GREAT comedy.
MIGHTY LIKE A MOOSE is a GREAT comedy.
WHY WORRY? is a GREAT comedy.
THE PAWNSHOP is a GREAT comedy.

CITY LIGHTS probably doesn't qualify AS a comedy, much less a great one.

Oh don’t be silly, of course CITY LIGHTS is a comedy. That said, I will have to admit that it has never been as high on my Chaplin favorite list as it seems to be with others. I think it is technically the sloppiest of Chaplin’s prime works, looking like something pieced together in dribs and drabs over a number of years (our favorite game is watch Chaplin’s moustache and eyebrows grow and shrink from scene to scene, and sometimes shot to shot) and continuity is generally very sloppy indeed (his street cleaner uniform goes from white pants to grey pants within the same scene). I think the gagging is somewhat weak compared to the films made around it (and I’ve always thought that THE CIRCUS is really one of the funniest pictures he made gag-wise, and have seen it work better with audiences than most of his other pictures in getting solid laughs) and I have actually seen the film fail with audiences not completely into Chaplin and willing to be charmed by anything he does.

And the famous ending, despite its ambiguity, has always come off as an admission of failure to me that Chaplin really had no idea how to wrap the thing up. Perhaps a brilliant way of getting out of that situation, but still an admission of failure nevertheless, and a corner neither Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd would have allowed themselves to be put into because they would never have proceeded on a story that they didn’t know the ending to. I definitely subscribe to Keaton’s opinion that Chaplin got “lazy” when he had his fame and his own studio, and as he made fewer and fewer films, and took longer to make them, the laziness shows through the seams more and more.

I do think Chaplin got very lucky in Harry Myers as the Millionaire. Myers performance is terrific, and he holds his own quite well with Chaplin.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

It's always struck me as the best example of what one writer referred to as Chaplin's "desert island" approach to structuring his comedy, using isolated comic scenes in a more or less dramatic story. By which I don't mean the most successful example, but the one in which that approach is most evident. Modern Times is equally episodic (if not moreso) but there the structure works better because the characters can keep moving from one comic sequence to the next, rather than returning to the demands of the story. It becomes more apparent when jumping back and forth between a highly comic sequence and a highly dramatic or serious one.

As for the ending, I'm always struck by how different viewers read it so differently. Some see it as a triumphantly happy ending, the girl finally recognizing her benefactor, and "living happily ever after". I always saw it as a deeply heartbreaking ending. The girl is clearly too disappointed for words upon discovering that he's a tramp, and there is no chance of any future between them. Of course, all of this is open to interpretation, which is part of the problem. Chaplin seems to have kept everything about the scene, especially the girl's face and reactions, purposefully expressionless enough that the viewer can interpret it any way he wants.

It's ashame Myers didn't have more of a career after City Lights. I see him every once in a while as an extra in various films of the 30s, though he does get a nice cameo as himself in Robert Florey's Hollywood Boulevard.

[Gary Johnson]

I don't believe you can say the ending is open to interpretation and then interpret it for us.

The girl is not "clearly too disappointed for words upon discovering that he's a tramp".
She is way too busy playing with her emotions over discovering who her benefactor actually is.
The reality will come later after the shock and amazement of the moment ends.

And that is when the interpretation begins.

Gary J.

[Matt Barry]

I don't believe you can say the ending is open to interpretation and then interpret it for us.

The girl is not "clearly too disappointed for words upon discovering that he's a tramp".
She is way too busy playing with her emotions over discovering who her benefactor actually is.
The reality will come later after the shock and amazement of the moment ends.

And that is when the interpretation begins.

Gary J.

True, although I know when I watch the scene, it's hard for me not to project my interpretation of what happens "after the fadeout" onto the scene itself, particularly the reactions of the girl, which is what I was describing.