City Lights

Some Context

Got the bats flu the most recent stemm as it seems. Charlie Chaplin was on my list to check - out. So the opportunity to do that was realized.

Also Charlie Chaplin is such a phenomenon. And there is this familiarity to his character that you develop. So it feels totally ok to just use Charlie.

City Lights

Touching story. Wery well played. Enjoyed the comedy.

Charlie had his own independent studio at the time of shooting. And compared to the earliest short silent comedy that I have had an opportunity to check. This definetly looks like more serios work. Surely you get what is expected - extremely comical scenes. And you get more variability because of length. But you also get the main plot that makes it a real movie. And there is something more I believe. Maybe it is that you can alter the speed of the show when you are not constrained by the short format. And Charlie uses that option to have scenes of different pace.

Earliest Works

And since I mentioned earliest - they may have something in them. But later overall quality gets better.

One interesting thing is that even in silent comedy they had managed to have an analog of laughing sound in the background. Anyway that is what possibly made me to switch to look for another period and to City Lights.

Other Info

One random detail about the movie is that the main actress was angrily dismissed when the movie was almost finished. It looks like the final stick was she trying to leave earlier because of her hairdresser appointment.

And another actres was tried but because the movie was so far in the development the final decision was to return the first actress to finish the movie.

The 20 years old actress was not too sophisticated and that ended-up adding value. Because of certain simplicity she provided.

It was also mentioned that Charlie worked under own schedule and could focus and perfect scenes for some time. It was said that the first meeting scene took 300+ takes. So there is thought in the way things made.