City Lights review (Blu-ray) ★★★★★

Review by Adam Stephen Kelly
Stars Charles Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill,
Florence Lee, Harry Myers, Al Ernest Garcia, Hank Mann | Written by Charles Chaplin
UK Certification U | UK RRP £19.99 | BR Region B | Runtime 87 minutes | Directed by Charles Chaplin

The films of Charlie Chaplin never fail to be charming. No matter how silly and outrageously slapstick they are, they each have the power in their cinematic cores to connect with the emotions of audiences far deeper than just making us laugh out loud. Watching City Lights, I was constantly aware of the smile on my face that was there from the first time The Tramp plodded into frame, to the moment the Old Hollywood beacon of “The End” appeared over one of the greatest scenes in cinema history. It was a true smile; genuine and honest.

No other Chaplin film has had quite the same effect on me as City Lights, the icon's very first film to include diegetic sound. It contains every unique quality of the original auteur's bold talent, as well as each element in the formula of what makes a great Chaplin movie. It presents these pieces of genius in a way that they each work in harmony and create film perfection: a feature-length comedy with excellent music and hilarious gags that is incredibly touching, emotionally engaging and brimming with sweetness. With a legacy adorned with a number of spellbinding classics such as The Kid, City Lights is what I call the definitive masterpiece of Charlie Chaplin.

1931's City Lights has The Tramp (Chaplin) falling in love with a pretty young flower seller who is blind. Of course, it takes a while for him to notice her impairment, but his affection for her blossoms the second he lays eyes on her. After discovering that the girl and her family are poor and heavily in debt, The Tramp desperately attempts to seek out ways in which to help her financially, from working an honest job to stepping inside the boxing ring, but his rocky relationship with an eccentric millionaire who's life he saved is never out of his reach for solutions to help the woman he loves.

The subtitle of the film's US copyright title is “A Comedy Romance in Pantomime”, and that's simply a wonderful way to summarise it. Some of Chaplin's finest humour can be found here in some of his very best scenes. The comedy set pieces are cleverly woven into the perfectly simple story rather than dotted around the film purely for laughs like in the somewhat lukewarm The Circus from 1928. The Little Tramp's magnum opus also features the most magnificent performance of his entire career: the very beautiful closing scene with Virginia Cherrill and an outpouring of emotion.

While this high definition remaster with the 1988 re-recording of the score, although it looks good, is not nearly as breathtaking as the film itself, City Lights is an absolute must whether you're a fan of Charlie Chaplin or not. A purely magical movie that will warm the cockles of your heart and stay with you forever.

EXTRAS TBC.

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