Two nights with Chaplin

Released in 1931, Chaplin’s masterpiece City Lights came out four years after the The Jazz Singer, the very first talkie. As a silent film, so far removed from cinema goers’ new tastes, the movie could have just flopped. It didn’t. And it is still considered one of the best films in cinema history. What went through Chaplin’s mind when he set about making a silent movie then?

First, as Roger Ebert puts it, “Buster Keaton's characters are clearly talkative. But [Chaplin’s] Tramp is more of a mime, a person for whom body language serves as speech.” And if a mime starts speaking, it obviously kind of ruins the magic. Moreover, Hollywood studios were shooting more and more talkies but the technology was still in its early days and very unsatisfying to a perfectionist like Chaplin.

Talk about a perfectionist… Filming started in early 1928 and ended in late 1930, which was (and still is) unusually long. But just take that scene in which the Tramp meets the Blind Girl. The first takes were made fairly early on but Chaplin kept looking for ways to show that the Girl mistakes the Tramp for a millionaire. He eventually found what he was looking for in September 1930, i.e. on the 534^th day of the shoot.

But this endless search for perfection didn’t take away the emotions, quite the opposite. Ebert recalls: “One night the Piazza San Marco was darkened, and City Lights was shown on a vast screen. When the flower girl recognized the Tramp, I heard much snuffling and blowing of noses around me; there wasn't a dry eye in the piazza.” You can put your eyes and your heart to the test on March 9^th and 10^th at the Philharmonie.

Julie