Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 10 September

City Lights (Chaplin, 1931)

After two thwarted efforts to watch all of the films in the Sight & Sound list of the 50 Best Films of All Time, I thought I should have anoth­er go.

My first attempt was for the RNZ web­site in 2020 and I got to num­ber 36 on the 2012 list before run­ning out of steam. Number 36 was a good one, though, as Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles would go on to be named num­ber one in the 2022 list.

When that 2022 list was announced I decided to have anoth­er go, trust­ing that I could recycle some of the earli­er titles. This worked really well until RNZ said they didn’t want to pay for them any­more. I’d got to equal-36 (again!) with Fritz Lang’s strik­ingly mod­ern thrill­er M.

Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights was only equal-50^th in 2012 but had ris­en to equal-36^th with M in 2022. It’s an unusu­al choice for Something to watch tonight because I’m not actu­ally all that fond of it (or Chaplin for that matter).

I know he was a geni­us, every­one tells me so, but I’ve seen enough clips from his most sig­ni­fic­ant silent works – The Gold Rush, The Kid, The Immigrant – to know that he’s just not my cup of tea.

A chal­lenge is a chal­lenge, how­ever, so my wife and I set aside an hour and a half to give the little tramp his due.

…

It’s sen­ti­ment­al rub­bish, frankly, with exten­ded – often repeated – epis­odes of slap­stick routines, many of which are like a greatest hits col­lec­tion from his most pop­u­lar early short films. The dif­fer­ence here is the scale and pre­ci­sion of those routines. His phys­ic­al prowess is uncanny, mak­ing the extremely dif­fi­cult look effortless.

Refer a friend

But, there’s some­thing about Chaplin and the Tramp that doesn’t con­nect with me. This style of com­edy is rooted in a tra­di­tion that was old fash­ioned even then. City Lights came out in 1931 and Chaplin was still res­ist­ant to mak­ing films with dia­logue (he was exper­i­ment­ing a bit with syn­chron­ised sound and he proved to be a gif­ted com­poser of film music) and the open­ing title card of the film describes it as a pantomime.

Chaplin’s ingra­ti­at­ing sen­ti­ment­al­ity in City Lights doesn’t feel as mod­ern to me as Keaton’s deadpan.

I’ll keep com­ing back to that 50 Best Films list, if that’s OK, because there are a few gaps I need to fill, as well as some that deserve a rewatch now that they are on UHD (like 2001: A Space Odyssey). Next up is Satyajit Ray’s mas­terly debut, Pather Panchali.

Where to watch City Lights

Aotearoa: Streaming on Kanopy (via par­ti­cip­at­ing libraries)

Australia: Streaming on Tubi (free with ads)

Canada: Streaming on Criterion Channel or Tubi (free with ads)

Ireland & UK: Streaming on NowTV

USA: Streaming on Max, Criterion Channel and Tubi (free with ads)

I expect that Kanopy in all ter­rit­or­ies would also have access to City Lights but it’s heard to tell. It is also out of copy­right so you would expect there to be plenty of uploaded cop­ies on YouTube but I couldn’t find them. Lots of clips and some inter­est­ing doc­u­ment­ar­ies about it, though.

Further reading

The oth­er RNZ Widescreen entries in the Sight & Sound 50 Best Films list can be found using these links: 2012 and 2022.