Charlie Chaplin (1951)

"City Lights" 225 one of the most distinguished in Broadway history. Chaplin attended the opening, escorting Constance Collier, the veteran English actress. In the audience were Peggy Hopkins Joyce, Grace Moore, and other notables. The film was received with cheers and tears. Some pronounced it Chaplin's masterpiece — the climax of his art. This may be considered not merely a tribute to the film itself, but an indirect comment on the quality of talking pictures people had been subjected to in the past four years. It may be that "City Lights" reminded them of something valuable they had lost. After the publicity, and the enthusiastic reviews, the New York public crowded the theatre. Those who had shaken their heads when Chaplin began "City Lights" now had to admit that he had done the seemingly impossible. He had made a financially successful silent film three years after the supposed demise of the silent screen. Their astonishment would have been even greater could they have foreseen the year 1950, when its revival on Broadway outgrossed many new films. "City Lights," subtitled "A comedy romance in pantomime," is one of Chaplin's cleverest and most original story ideas. Actually it is a tragi-comedy, the accent as much on the love story as on the humor; and its prevailing attitude one of sharp irony. Critics who had deplored the "vulgarity" of his previous films changed their tune. Though many of his old slapstick gags reappeared, he had now become an accepted tradition, a king who could do no wrong. Some critics even complained that the film was too slow! There is, in fact, little of the old slapdash knockabout that distinguished his early films. The approach to the story is a straight, realistic one with none of the fantastic elements contained in "The Pawnshop," "Shoulder Arms," "The Gold Rush," etc. No one scene in "City