We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
96 CELLULOID
easily picked up and not long-lived, but the pathos of the whole theme and the pathetic mood of one or two individual scenes is too deep down to be lightly forgotten. I admit that I am moved beyond words by the scenes of the dilapidated but happy Chaplin and the exquisite beauty of the blind flowergirl. They move me a thousand times more than the tractors of the Soviets, Clarence Brown's Garbo, or Anthony Asquith's machine-gun. Yet I have met people who have been bored to death by City Lights. I even know a scenario-writer who was unable to sit through the picture.
Conceived from a multitude of aspects, every sequence and every scene, every shot and every detail of City Lights has been deliberately and carefully preconceived in the preparation. Chaplin is fortunate in possessing a wonderful sense of visualization. Whilst working on a set he can look far ahead on to the screens of the world and into the minds of his audiences. It is almost impossible to pick out a single shot from this film and maintain that it would have beefi more effective if taken otherwise. Similarly, the time-lengths of his shots on the screen are right to the fraction of a second, never a frame too long or too short. I should imagine that he assembles his shots purely on the spur of the moment. He certainly does not cut according to any orthodox formula arrived at by involved arithmetical calculation. He judges the screen-length of a shot by watching its projection, as is customary with most American editors; but so good is his technique that we in the audience forget that we are seeing reels of projected celluloid.