Movie #55 – City Lights (1931) - 87 min, cert U.
Chaplin is a tramp, sleeping rough wherever he can find some shelter. He sees a pretty blind girl selling flowers and falls in love with her. He stops a man from killing himself in the river, and the man, who turns out to be rich, invites him back to his house. They go out on the town and get drunk. Returning home the man gives the tramp his car and some money. The tramp uses his newly acquired riches to impress the flower-seller who believes he is some kind of rich benefactor. He finds out that she is on the verge of being evicted due to rent arrears, and goes out to try and raise the money she needs. His rich friend has sobered up and no longer wants to know him, so he tries his hand at prize-fighting. When this doesn’t work, he goes back to his rich friend and manages to foil a robbery. This gains him enough money to pay the girl’s rent and have enough left over to pay for an operation that restores her sight.
Things have changed a lot in the last eighty years, and this film is now very, very dated. Antics that audiences no doubt found hilarious back then, had me bored to tears. The scene where Chaplin saves the man from drowning himself in the river was just so predictable that it reminded me of the Chuckle Brothers on a bad day. There was one scene that made me laugh, which was the boxing match. I thought it was for the most part very clever and well choreographed. But overall, this was a dire film. There are more Chaplin films to come in the Top 250, and on the strength of this one, supposedly the best of them, then I’m not looking forward to them at all.
Score – 1/10. Am I being too harsh? Possibly, but that’s how it made me feel.
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