![]() 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. 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. ![]() Almost apologetic, standing outside myself and looking … It’s a beautiful scene, beautiful, and because it isn’t over-acted.” Near the end of his life, Chaplin still marvelled at the magic of the scene: “I’ve had that once or twice, he said, …in City Lights just the last scene … I’m not acting …. The critic James Agee said that it was “the greatest piece of acting and the highest moment in movies”. Even before he shot it, he had a sense that if it succeeded this would be one of his finest scenes. Once this was decided, he had - unusually - a clear idea of how the film would end - the moment when the blind girl, her sight restored, finally sees the sad reality of her benefactor. His first idea was that he himself should play a clown who loses his sight but tries to conceal his handicap from his little daughter.Ĭostume test for Chaplin as a handsome officer in an unused dream sequence for City Lightsįrom this he moved to the idea of a blind girl, who builds up a romanticised image of the little man who falls in love with her and makes great sacrifices to find money for her cure. From the start he decided it would be about blindness. As the critic Alistair Cooke wrote, the film, despite all the struggles, “flows as easily as water over pebbles”.Ĭhaplin directing the opening scene of City LightsĪs usual with Chaplin’s projects, the story went through many changes. The marvel is that the finished film betrays nothing of this effort and anxiety. By the time it was completed he had spent two years and eight months on the work, with almost 190 days of actual shooting. Charlie Chaplin and Virginia Cherrill in City Lights (1931)Ĭity Lights proved to be the hardest and longest undertaking of Chaplin’s career. ![]()
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