Celluloid : the film to-day (1931)

CITY LIGHTS 93 slight skeleton for what is in my opinion one of the most moving and certainly one of the most entertaining films produced during the dialogue period. But in its slightness rests its power — the power of simple appeal — as the expression of a single personality. Chaplin is Chaplin to all mentalities and to all classes. The fact that he delights the severest critic does not affect his world-wide popularity. He has always appealed to a vast number of filmgoers who revel principally in his comicalities, in the sight of his bowler hat and his big boots, in the succession of ridiculous situations into which he wanders, and in the diversity of funny characters against whom he pits his ingenuity. I do not think that the great masses which flock to his films see deeply into the pathos underlying these humorous adventures, but there is no reason why they should not enjoy his pictures, as indeed they do, to their hearts' content. The truth is that a Chaplin film touches so many aspects of life that every kind of mentality can find something of particular application to its own existence. The profundities of City Lights are so deep down that few probably of those who have seen it have plumbed it to the depths. Delight for the masses, by which we mean entertainment, lies easy to behold on the surface. Everyone can see the humour of City Lights^ especially when the gags are so well invented. You, I and the man next to me, all laugh when Chaplin swallows a toy whistle out of a cracker and it sounds its doleful note every time he hiccoughs. He is a figure of fun to the meanest intelligence. When the flowergirl drenches him with water because she is blind we burst