"City Lights"

"The Circus" war Chaplin's next film, but I have not seen it so I must pass on to "City Lights" which was released in New Zealand a few years ago. This film is probably Chaplin's most famous, not only because of its artistic appeal, but also because it was produced after the introduction of sound to motion pictures. Chaplin had been opposed to the idea of sound: "I don't find the voice necessary. It spoils the art as much as painting statuary. I would as soon rouge marble cheeks. Pictures are pantomimic art Talkies annihilate the great beauty of silence." But I believe, with Richard Griffith, that Chaplin, in producing "City Lights" was not merely challenging the aesthetic and commercial feasibility of the talkies. He was trying to pre-serve the silence of Charlie. "Charlie the central [unclear: ire] in the pantheon of modern [unclear: my] would cease to be universal once he spoke in any particular language or gave himself a local habitation or a name."

So "City Lights" once again presents us with the personality of Charlie, and what has clearly become the reiterated and significant symbols of Chaplin's work—the idealist tramp with his unquenchable love, compassion, chivalry and goodness; the girl, in this case blind, who is complementary to him, in need of his devotion and herself submissive, feminine and unattainable. The eccentric millionaire upon which their fate depends, is the new form of the "deux ex machina." changing the social forces that overwhelm them according to his incalculable whim. I noticed an increased sadness from the Charlie of "The Gold Rush." There is a lassitude, an acceptance of un-happiness. It is as though Chaplin were expressing through Charlie the impact of the deeply-felt effects in his own life and in the world of film—his unsavoury divorce and the coming of talkies.