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City Lights shows an increase in the sadness of Charlie. Instead of his former jauntiness, his indifference to fate, his uncontrollable irony, there is a lassitude, an acceptance of unhappiness that was first indicated in The Gold Rush (1925), then came to shadow The Circus (1928), and finally in City Lights (1931) took so prominent a place it was as though Chaplin were expressing through Charlie the impact of cataclysmic effects in his own life and in the world of film — his unsavoury divorce case, and the coming of talkies.
To the Charlie of City Lights Alexander Woolcott's accolade most properly belongs — "It must be said of Chaplin that he has created only one character, but that one, in his matchless courtesy, in his unfailing gallantry — his preposterous, innocent gallantry, in a world of gross Goliaths — that character is, I think, the finest gentleman of our time".
t©^ Mastery
ALL CHAPLIN'S WORK IS MARKED WITH TREMENDOUS FEELING,
sometimes translated into terms of sentimentality and pathos, always vital and effective. As he gained in technique, experience, and financial and artistic independence, so he was able to express more fully the great torrent of feeling within him. The torment and tempest of his own life, the active and increasing hostility against him in America, affected, but did not check the torrent. These factors served to increase the tragic feeling in his work, made him reaffirm his identity with the underdog, caused him to clarify his feelings about society, about mankind, about the universe.
In his last three films, he has made his unequivocal statements of his most passionate concern for humanity, and equally passionate hatred of all that impedes mankind in its struggle to survive. That this hatred was still expressed with hilarious comedy is part of the miracle of genius.
Five years elapsed between the release of City Lights (1931) and that of Modern Times (1936); and the latter is evidence that in that intervening period, Chaplin recovered fully from the events that threatened to overcome him in the earlier years of his work with United Artists. The Charlie of City Lights was as nearly defeated as we had ever seen him, left cruelly without illusion or dream to sustain him at the end, as Chaplin himself had been left.
Modern Times is as glowing with vitality and optimism, impertinence and humour, as City Lights was shadowed with lassitude, pessimism and pain. There could not be greater contrast in mood than there is between these two films chronologically next to each other. It