City Lights: Love and Class
“I think romance is an approach to make life interesting and noble and beautiful…I say that [without romance] life can be a very horrifying and frightening thing”
BY GENEVIEVE BLYTHE“I think romance is an approach to make life interesting and noble and beautiful…I say that [without romance] life can be a very horrifying and frightening thing”
Pathos – the word always thrown around when speaking of Chaplin’s films. Yet it is impossible to speak of them without acknowledging it. City Lights is brilliant for the way in which it threads social commentary, romance, and comedy together, all without feeling forced. Chaplin accomplishes this feat of balancing through his signature sense of sentiment and pathos, infusing the Tramp with a humility that both makes our hearts swell and gives us a laugh.
The Tramp is a disruption to bourgeois life – asleep in the arms of the figure of Prosperity, and causing mayhem amid the crowds of the Millionaire’s associates. His own value of and attitude towards money and so-called prosperity fall out of line with that of the bourgeois. He is quick and eager to give any money he receives to the Blind Girl whom he is instantly smitten with. Love overcomes the importance of economic circumstance. Completely unconcerned with his own situation, he allows this childlike and humble love to guide his efforts.
Even still, the bourgeois attitude remains pervasive. The Blind Girl believes him to be wealthy and the Tramp keeps the ruse up to continue seeing and aiding her, her lack of sight the sole reason the Tramp can inhabit this necessary role. The Billionaire only welcomes the Tramp into his life when he is completely inebriated, his own form of blindness. The moment he sees the Tramp the morning after in the sober daylight he kicks him out of his presence.
Despite it all, Chaplin ends on a beautifully optimistic note. The Blind Girl can see and the Tramp has stumbled upon her once again. The realization dawns upon her and she smiles. Both Chaplin and Virgina Cherrill give incredibly heartfelt performances in the final scene, lending even more height to the romance grounded in the supreme simplicity of the phrase “You can see now?”. Perhaps love really can overcome economics. It will bring a tear to even the driest eyes. It certainly did to mine.