With the Ingmar Bergman at-your-leisure marathon (as yet unannounced – SPOILER!) staring us down in December, I wanted to go with some lighter fare leading up to it. Of course, the most recent installment was Fiend Without A Face – a goofy ’50s sci-fi/schlock horror piece – and to follow that up I decided to go with Charlie Chaplin‘s masterpiece (or if you ask me, one of his two masterpieces, but the other, a late-career Limelight, is not so widely known), the 1931 silent film City Lights. City Lights has been widely regarded by some of the greatest directors of all time (Wikipedia lists not only Federico Fellini and Woody Allen as fans, but has both Stanley Kubrick and Andrei Tarkovsky listing it as their #5 film of all time, and Orson Welles as his #1!) and was a bit of a maverick film, seeing as it was a silent film made some four years into the new “talkie” era. In fact, it was one of the last notable silent films that can be considered to truly belong to the silent film genre (as opposed to a later homage to the silent film genre) with perhaps only F. W. Murnau’s Tabu, Ozu’s I Was Born, But… and A Story of Floating Weeds, and Chaplin’s own Modern Times coming on its heels.
But that wasn’t all, because to pair with City Lights I chose the second-ever episode of The Twilight Zone, entitled One For The Angels, a 1959 piece of outré television that also comes in a bit lighter than your traditional Twilight Zone fare. Let’s start with that.
What…phony dog poo?
Lou Bookman is small time salesman, peddling various useless wares out of a suitcase for a living. Hey, somebody’s gotta do it! He’s getting on in years, has no family, but does adore the neighborhood children.
One afternoon, Bookman is visited by a mysterious, well-dressed stranger, whom the audience recognizes almost immediately as Death. Bookman is a bit slower on the uptake, and he can’t quite figure out what’s going on until one of the neighborhood girls comes to his door, asking him to fix a toy robot she has bought off him. He does so, but it’s her inability to see Death that finally clues Bookman in to the situation at hand. He’s scheduled to go at midnight tonight.
Well, needless to say, Bookman’s not ready, and he begs and pleads, and Death finally lists off a few exceptions that can get a fella off the list temporarily – including “important unfinished business”. Bookman claims that he hasn’t yet made the sales pitch of a lifetime, “one for the angels” he calls it, and while Death doesn’t think this quite qualifies, he bemusedly grants Bookman time until he can make that pitch. When does he think that will be, Death asks, and Bookman says that there wasn’t any stipulation, and he figures that he’ll wait a good long time before making any pitch ever again. He thinks he has the upper hand, but Death still has some unfinished business. A midnight appointment is a midnight appointment, and somebody’s gotta take Bookman’s place, Death notes – as the screech of tires in the street can be heard and the little girl with the broken robot lies comatose in the street in front of a truck.
As midnight approaches, Bookman begs Death to take him instead of the little girl, but Death is having none of it. In desperation, Bookman opens up his case and begins hawking his wares to Death – toys, ties, watches, every single thing that he has in the case, and his pitch is so convincing that he finally manages to get Death to purchase the entire lot…just as the clock strikes midnight. Death, for the first time, has missed his appointment, and as a consequence the little girl wakes from her coma, the doctor pronouncing that she is out of danger.
Well, both agree that any pitch that could make Death miss his appointed time must indeed have been the pitch of a lifetime, and Death and Bookman stroll off together. See? It’s practically a happy ending!
But now for our feature film:
He has a wife, you know. Do you know what she is called? Gladius. Gladius Buttocks.
City Lights yet again features Chaplin’s most famous character – the Tramp. The film starts with a few scenes of pure comedy, one featuring the Tramp caught sleeping under a tarp veiling a new statue about to be revealed to the public, and one featuring him admiring a nude mannequin while narrowly and unwittingly missing several disasters involving an in-sidewalk elevator. But these tack-on scenes merely serve as the amuse-bouche for the plot of the film.
Would you like to come with me to the arcade and play some pinball?
The Tramp comes across a young woman selling flowers, and when he purchases one (with what is surely his bottom dollar) he realizes that she is blind. He demurs taking any change from her and skitters off, leaving her to confuse him (and his generous tip) with the sound of a gentleman getting into a car. Well, the Tramp falls in love, but being poor, he wanders off on his way.
No money in our jackets and our jeans are torn
The Tramp goes down to the waterfront that evening, treasuring his flower and thinking about the girl, when he encounters a drunken man attempting to kill himself. Through a bit of very wet slapstick he manages to save the man’s life. The man turns out to be a despondent millionaire, and he invites his new best friend the Tramp back to his house for drinks.
Not so much as a “by-your-leave”! Bloody do-gooder!
They drink until sun-up, but when the Tramp is leaving, the blind flower woman is passing by, so he rushes back inside to get some money for flowers – he manages to buy the whole lot of her flowers at a generous price (it’s not HIS money!) The millionaire even lets the Tramp take his convertible out to impress the girl, but when he sobers up, he no longer remembers the Tramp and has him thrown out of the house.
You’ll be tattered, torn, and hurtin’/Once the Munce is done with you! Go Eagles!
But, drunk again later in the day he once again recognizes his friend and it’s another repeat of the same story – drinking. parties, and the ultimate sober who-is-this-homeless-guy in the morning.
Wonderful – now hold that for an hour while I go get Monsieur Daguerre
Well, all the gold-digging ends soon enough, because the Millionaire heads off on a trip to Europe, and the Tramp begins taking odd jobs to try to earn money for her so that he can continue to pretend to be wealthy. He has read in the newspaper of a doctor in Vienna who can cure blindness, and he hopes to get the money to send her there. But soon it turns out that the young woman (and her grandmother, who never manages to see the Tramp) are to be evicted from their apartment for not paying a back rent of $20, and the Tramp is desperate to make some cash.
The Fleshpressing Forwards Disgustipator – an unorthodox, but often effective, submission move
By chance he runs into a crooked boxer who promises him half of a $50 purse just to enter the ring with him to be a patsy. The Tramp agrees, but when his partner learns that the cops are on to him, he bails out, leaving the Tramp to fight a replacement fighter who has no interest in splitting any pot. You’d be forgiven for thinking for a minute that the Tramp would pull this one off, but in the end he is knocked out and left with no money at all.
Fortunately, his millionaire benefactor has just returned from Europe, and fortunately he has been drinking again, so everything is hunky-dory between the two and the Tramp manages to get the millionaire to give him the money to pay not just the rent but also for the blind woman’s surgery. But unbeknownst to them, there is a pair of burglars in the house. They knock out the millionaire, and in the commotion the Tramp, with a good wad of money on him, is mistaken for one of the burglars. He manages to escape long enough to pass off the money to the girl, but tells her that he’ll be going away for a while.
I thought you were Dale!
As indeed he does, spending some months in prison. By the time he is released, the blind girl has had her operation and is now the proprietor of a flower shop, and is endlessly dreaming that some day her rich boyfriend will return. When the tramp happens to look in the window and see her, he naturally stares, and she laughs it off, seeing this homeless tramp apparently falling for her. But she has a measure of pity, and she comes out of her shop to give him a flower and a coin. But when she takes his hand, she recognizes its touch.
Yeah, the woes of popcorn. Been there.
“You?” she asks.
“You can see now?” he replies.
The End
Of the few early Chaplin films I’ve seen, City Lights is by far my favorite, with a plot that actually moves, some timeless slapstick, and what is generally acknowledged to be one of the greatest endings of all time. In 1949 novelist and critic James Agee called the final scene “the greatest single piece of acting ever committed to celluloid”, and it’s hard to argue the point. Every time I see the film it’s a bit hard to read the final title card as it always seems to get very dusty in the room right about then, but I can still see well enough to know that Chaplin and co-star Virginia Cherrill pretty much nailed it.
Cinema 1544: The As-Official-As-It-Gets Site 