Another one of The Tramp's adventures in film, an what a lovely one! In this City Lights, The Tramp tries to help a poor and blind flower girl he has fallen in love with.
So many great scenes where Chaplin delivered a magnificient and touching performance once again.
Comedy, drama and romance all mixed together to create a beautiful piece of cinema.
Written, directed, scored and performed by the incredible Charlie Chaplin.
He's again the hobo. Every time I watch a Chaplin movie I realize that this isn't my cup of tea. I don't think it's funny or a histrionic masterclass. I fail to understand why people obviously thought that it was funny when the movie premiered. It's just silly. I mean there's perhaps historic relevance here but I can't really appreciate this fact since I don't know how other movies from that era compared.
That said, there's bits and pieces I like: The historic city, the Rolls-Royce, the contemporary entertainment clothes and interior design. The fight night is entertaining. I like the (tragic?) ending. I always liked that Chaplin's tramp showed poor people and their desolation in midst a rich upper class (who isn't always happy either). The entire romance isn't bad either. Well, it's not particularly romantic but the mere fact that she's blind and poor makes his feelings for her special.
These silent slap stick movies just can’t keep me entertained. There’s a lot of impressive stuff (the boxing match for example), but the story isn’t compelling enough to make up for the outdated humor.
An excellent film that holds up in many ways even today. Charlie Chaplin's charm is timeless and iconic. Big props to all of the actors in this. The humor is great and generally clever. Although I think some of the jokes lose their impact due to being unnecessarily dragged on too long. Overall, a must-watch classic with some prominent flaws that are easy to overlook due to the really high highs. 8/10. Personally, The Gold Rush is still my favorite Chaplin film.
Tough to say whether I like this film better than Modern Times, but it's unquestionably a masterpiece. Every scene lands, from the statue to the boxing match, and it's all in service of the overarching love story. This is the sort of emotion that I don't feel Keaton can ever quite muster, and it lands brilliantly in this movie.
City Lights is truly a wonderful film. A touching love story wrapped in slapstick like only Chaplin can create. And that final scene... magic!
One of the late masterpieces of silent cinema and perhaps Chaplin’s most famous.
Full of empathy and pathos, able to seamlessly switch tone in a second, the story is touching, the visual composition and blocking excellent.
Eminently watchable over and over again. Sweeps you away.
8/10
Another classical show from Charlie Chaplin.Got a nice vibe of romance with some everlasting simple laughs.Chaplin rocks always.
Despite being released in the 1930s, City Lights remains a relevant film even today in 2022 given the themes addressed within the film, such as depression, suicide, poverty, the difference between rich and poor, blindness, alcohol... And it is this topicality that makes the film a masterpiece, because even though 100 years have passed, the film feels like it came out this year.
The ending is perfect, and I never imagined a silent film could bring tears to my eyes.
Also worth mentioning is the soundtrack. Amazing
Charlie Chaplin here proves to be a genius, who in addition to being the leading actor in the film, also plays the role of director, screenwriting and editing, thus churning out a masterpiece of comedy and one of the most beautiful films in the history of cinema.
Charlie Chaplin falls for a blind flower girl and lives the high life with a lush, amnesiac fatcat, sampling and exploiting various urban lifestyles along the way. Playful and carefree, like all the classic auteur's best pantomimes, this is more of a loosely-related collection of skits than an all-enveloping story. The sidetracks are all great, of course - The Tramp and a late replacement swinging for the fences in the boxing ring, all manner of drunken hijinx in a ritzy club on New Year's Eve, slapstick encounters with a newly-unveiled statue before an outraged audience - but it doesn't get quite as deep under the skin as Chaplin's masterpieces.
That he doesn't share a wealth of chemistry with his leading lady, Virginia Cherrill (who endured a contentious relationship with the star during production), isn't so much to blame as their too-swift courtship and her disappearance during the second act. We never really get a chance to grow into loving them as a couple, though their sweet parting shot serves as proof that such spoils were within reach. Stuffed with ideas and ingenuity, City Lights still makes for an endearing, if scatter-brained, early romantic comedy.
Chaplin's body language is great. A lot of fun scenes and a nice love story.
Rely on Charlie Chaplin to beautifully convey the simple joys and troubles of human experience with the most minute of actions and expressions. City Lights once again showcases his blessed gift of seamlessly providing sharp comic balance for his more distressing & gloomy subject matter, making use of the Tramp’s clumsy mannerisms and exaggerated desire for love for spot-on dramatic irony and clear sense of his inferiority complex.
The film reaches maximum poignancy once these feelings are challenged and its simple thematic ambitions come to bloom; through his misguided perception of a suicidal millionaire, he falsely comes to think that true happiness stems from high status, lavish materialism, and the consistent drink. This in turn adjusts his approach to a blind flower-girl he seeks, relying on a withdrawn, dishonest self-presentation that while tender, doesn’t represent a high moral state.
Again, Chaplin never loses sight of the film’s emotional balance, taking generally bleak incidents associated with the ongoing Great Depression and exploiting them for timeless comic relief, bringing forth vivid insight to the absurdities of wealth, the country’s financial desperation, and the harmful consequences they all bear. The boxing sequence is prime slapstick Chaplin, with creative scenery-chewing further enhancing the Tramp’s tireless ambitions, but the final scene takes the ranks as prime human Chaplin, bringing its smallest of motifs and the Tramp’s foregoing self-consciousness to a seamless thematic revelation.
Wealth will buy you indulgence, but won’t buy you friends. Only in staying true to yourself will you live at with utmost dignity, moral integrity, and euphoria. Maintain the human inside, and there will surely be someone willing to embrace it. And that there’s a priceless luxury.
This is my favorite Chaplin's movie! it's so funny and beautiful at the same time. The end is spectacular, one of the most beautiful ending in the cinema's history.
Shout by omar essayesBlockedParent2015-12-22T09:53:49Z
That's brilliant!!!!
It's a must watch movie don't miss it!
Sadness and joy in the same movie