Despite the domination of talking pictures in the late 1920s, Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights (1931) blazed its way into the era, serving as one of the most remarkable landmarks in silent cinema, which bridges all elements for which Chaplin is remembered, from slapstick and pathos to melodrama and social satire. As City Lights unfolds, the Tramp character represents those outsiders neglected by the society, showing different layers of desire, struggle and compassion. He forms relationships with two individuals whose incapability to see him: a drunk suicidal Millionaire who doesn't recognize the Tramp and a blind Flower Girl who mistakes his noble status. Nevertheless, their “blindnesses” allow them to see the Tramp’s inner personality, a kind-hearted fellow who repeatedly saves the Millionaire’s life, and a man who is willing to risk everything to give the Flower Girl a chance to restore her eyesight. Undoubtedly, the success of City Lights lies on its universal language, which transcends all cultural and political barriers. This paper will, therefore, examine the advanced cinematic techniques in the City Lights (including the utilization of frame, lighting, performances and sound design), the theme of misrecognition and the act of seeing, as well as its comedic style and presentation of human complexity in comparison to Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last, ultimately demonstrating how Chaplin’s film goes beyond social convention and remain one of the purest examples of timeless filmmaking.
Most of Chaplin’s films utilizes the effect of the camera frame to its fullest: To Chaplin, the border of the screen is not simply an edge, but a dynamic boundary that helps intensify the interior of the image. Chaplin’s films not only create a visible organization among subjects on the screen, but also adopt defined perspectives on the action, as well as give rise to off-screen implications. He brilliantly refines the foreground, middle-ground and background to enhance the vibrancy of a scene, in which each shot is full of action and meticulously choreographed. Chaplin’s editing style, as a consequence, depends on the characters’ activities within a frame and their logical continuity into the next frame. His use of close-ups in-between long and medium shots to intensify emotions helps distinguish the importance of the human face from its physical surroundings. In addition, the gorgeous cinematography is accompanied by the use of standard three-point lighting system within the Hollywood studio era. Key lighting appears during daytime scenes, evoking a sense of optimism and liveliness, while fill lighting is used for nighttime or indoor scenes to show contrast and urgency. Back lighting functions as a way of illuminating the characters and creating a realistic nuance. Furthermore, Chaplin’s focus on facial expressions plays a crucial role in City Lights—the Tramp’s face is highlighted with makeup and subtle gestures to evoke his eccentricity and empathy. His appearance as a peculiar man degraded by the general public is not just to amuse the viewer but also insert Chaplin’s social criticism. City Lights seems to imply that the Tramp’s misfortune results from both modern capitalism and economic depression. For instance, at the beginning of the film, the Tramp is seen on a monument during an inauguration, crawling up and down, trying to get away from the crowd’s attention. This series of comedic gags refers to the defiance of the government and those who support the bureaucratic power system. Some people are giving speeches, but what the viewer hear is not real voices but distorted, mumbling and ridiculous sound effects. Although City Lights has no spoken dialogue, it possesses a synchronized soundtrack with diegetic noises and stylized music scores, whose rhythms energize and connect different visual segments, accompanying the actions and sustaining the dynamic pace of the film. Without a doubt, the employment of frame, lighting and silent film’s standard components such as intertitles and body language have all contributed to City Lights’s universalization.
A major concept permeating City Lights is the idea of mistaken identity and seeing the true nature of people, a theme that defines social conflicts and anonymity problems in America’s mid-twentieth century. In one scene, the Tramp crosses paths with a suicidal Millionaire who is about to throw himself into the river—the Tramp saves the Millionaire from alcoholic despair, they become friends and the Millionaire takes him to several entertainment places. However, when the Millionaire is sober, he has no memories of nighttime events and treats the Tramp with the hostility that the wealthy reserves for the poor. This mismatched friendship between the Millionaire and the Tramp is ironic in itself: While the Tramp has no precious assets, the Millionaire possesses an endless supply of cash. The Millionaire character represents the whimsical ignorance of the rich forces, who shape this unfair and arbitrary system where underdog like the Tramp has to struggle. Chaplin’s comments on class boundaries are literalized through drunkenness, which refers to the shortsightedness and artificiality of the upper-class. In addition, Chaplin adds a sentimental romance between the Tramp and a blind Flower Girl, who mistakes him for a rich benefactor. Since the Flower Girl and her mother comes close to poverty, the impulsive and kind-hearted Tramp steps forward to support her condition. To gain money for her eyesight operation, the Tramp involves himself in several humiliations and violations, from working tirelessly to desperately fighting in a boxing match. In another adventure with the Millionaire, the Tramp asks for his help and benefits from his drunken generosity, yet after the Millionaire gives a big amount of money to the Tramp, his house is burglarized and surrounded by police. The Millionaire later regains consciousness and is unable to identify the Tramp, whose pocket is now full of cash; thus, the Tramp is then captured and jailed by authorities. At the end of the film, one of the most heart-breaking scenes in cinema history: The Tramp, while wandering on the street after being released from prison, encounters the Flower Girl at her new shop. They catch each other’s eyes; she hands him a flower and puts a coin in his palm, which recalls her of the feel of his hand. The camera changes between the surprise and tenderness in the Flower Girl’s and the nervousness and longing in the Tramp’s eyes. The flower here symbolizes the permanence of compassion that they both share, even after she realizes that he is only a poor human. In Charlie Chaplin’s official website, he shared some reactions towards this ending sequence: “I’ve had that once or twice, in 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.” It is also stated that, “He spent many laborious weeks on the deceptively simple scene where the Tramp and the flower girl first meet, setting up the premise of the story. Here, in two or three minutes, through action alone, he establishes the meeting of the two people; the Tramp’s recognition that she is blind, and his instant fascination and pity and the girl’s misconception that this poor creature is a rich man. At the end of the sequence, having built up the sentiment to a high pitch, he brilliantly dashes it with a touch of broad comedy”. In conclusion, Chaplin’s personal insertion into the film with much characteristic mania and determination to shoot a silent in the rising era of the talkies only adds to the uniqueness of City Lights. Central to its success is the way Chaplin incorporates different disjointed, short gags into a coherent feature. Even contextualized his enormous filmography that generated Modern Times (1936), earlier masterpieces—The Kid (1921), The Circus (1928) or The Gold Rush (1925)—City Lights still stands out as an uninterrupted narrative through excellent mise-en-scene, cinematography, sound design and performance.
While Chaplin brings his own improvised idiosyncrasy to create universality and touch any viewer regardless of generation or nationality, Harold Lloyd’s style stands on a different mode. Although he is regarded along with Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton as a master trio of the classic comedy, his humorous, romantic drama is built upon a specific purpose. In contrast to the Tramp’s oversized pants, bower hat and cane—Lloyd’s character’s trademark is a pair of glasses, a straw hat and a suit, which makes him look like a young nerdy who wants to fit in and flourish in life. His character usually exhibit a positive and playful attitude, which differs from Chaplin's marginalized, romantically oriented Tramp. However, unlike the politically deconstructive Chaplin, whose personas resonate easily with today’s audiences, Lloyd's screen personality is almost forgotten. His Safety Last (1923) features an average countryside man trying to make ends meet in a big city in order to impress his fiancee. The Boy lands a job as a clerk in a department store, but his promising letters home to the fiancee allure her belief in his fortune. The second half of the film shifts into a surreal twist when The Boy has to replace his friend to get $1000 by climbing a 12-floor building. By making his character so believable and authentic, Lloyd elevates the death-defying stunts and absurd humor, especially the legendary climbing sequence, to an extremely suspenseful level. The tension between a realistic character and a a non-realistic circumstance keeps the viewer simultaneously excited and worried for the character. According to PBS, “Lloyd knew that if he could keep an audience on the edge of their seats like this, he could make them laugh even harder. So, using the tricks of photographic perspective, he began to shoot scenes that looked as if they were happening on the sides of buildings, on scaffoldings, or hanging from clocks. These acrobatic hi-jinks seemed amazingly real in a time before special effects”. Lloyd is not as sentimental or inventive as his contemporary Chaplin—his style is, instead, a minimalist one: From the mundane situation of a clerk in a clothing store who desperately needs to earn money, he finds himself swinging and holding ontoonto a giant clock on the side of a building. The Boy’s desire to earn a living is the rudimentary cause of all of his troubles; on the other hand, the Tramp’s bad luck is caused by societal ignorance and class differences. Much of the plots in Safety Last and City Lights revolves around the pursuit of a girl, yet Lloyd’s building-climbing demonstrates manly bravery on some aspects, while the Tramp’s struggle to pay off the Flower Girl’s debts shows his profound inner personality instead of masculinity. Triumphing mime, gestures and facial expressions, the Tramp character is relatable to any viewer—the fact that he doesn’t talk much, a difference from Lloyd’s loquacious charisma, also contributes to his innocence, cluelessness and honesty. He serves as a symbolic figure himself, standing for the primitive expressions of humanity, hope and optimism.
As Chaplin constructs City Lights from personal insights and experiences, its simplicity and affectionate depiction of human complexity build up such a poignant story, ultimately justifying the endurance of silent film and its visual power. It is undeniable to say that Chaplin’s openness and willingness to depict reality despite its harshness moves beyond traditional filmmaking to reach worldwide audiences.
Works Cited
City Lights. Chaplin, Charlie. 1931.
Safety Last. Lloyd, Harold. 1923.
Robinson, David. Filming City Lights. charliechaplin.com. 2004. https://www.charliechaplin.com/en/biography/articles/4-City-Lights
Brownlow, Kevin. Gill, David. Harold Lloyd. The Third Genius. PBS: American Masters. January 2006.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/harold-lloyd-about-harold-lloyd/647/