Tripwire Reviews Criterion’s City Lights

Bright Lights

Tripwire’s contributing writer Simon Kennedy takes a look at Criterion’s new edition of Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights out now on Blu-Ray and DVD…

City Lights
Director: Charlie Chaplin
Stars: Charlie Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill, Florence Lee

If you happened to see or read Mark Cousins’ seminal work, The Story Of Film : An Odyssey, his most telling comments on the visual power of cinema were often saved for the early greats: Keaton, Eisenstein, Murnau and the best-known today, Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin was pivotal to the new art form’s global reach. His loveable Tramp was an intelligent, world-weary, put-upon character. In previous film incarnations, such as The Gold Rush or The Circus, Chaplin’s Tramp life was as aspirational as it was circumstantial. He did what he had to to survive. Almost like those watching. Those being subjected to ‘Epi-social’ circumstances. From economics to politics.

In City Lights however, it’s boom time. When it began shooting in 1928, it was. Chaplin loved the film. He felt closer to it than any before. Peter Lord’s contribution to the ‘Chaplin Today’: “City Lights,” (a documentary that has been around before), highlights this as a personal film and he is too right. Chaplin’s lovable vagrant falls for a young blind woman (Virginia Cherrill). She sells flowers on the street and, after Chaplin’s Tramp has been wandering the city, mistakes him for a millionaire, showing that love is blind and the nose might not have been heightened in its sensitivity as well. A Depression-era smash hit, it began production after the advent of sound. The funny town unveiling of a statue however reveals Chaplin’s hostility to the passing craze of sound.

Criterion have a mixed bag to offer us. City Lights has never looked better. The 4K Transfer has been processed to its pinnacle, meaning it is unlikely that another run in 6K or 8K will benefit it any more. The soundtrack has a little way to go mind, simply as that heaviness in the early scenes are not as good as they have been when screened (though that is a minor quibble). Charlie Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance’s commentary is the highlight here. He starts anew, from a modern position. Chaplin is going through a reimagining within film circles. He went out of vogue and is now coming rightly back into style. I loved the Chaplin’s short film The Champion (1915) but hated that you get bits of it. Why undercut us?

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• Digital restoration from a 4K film transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• New audio commentary by Charlie Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance
• Chaplin Today: “City Lights,” a 2003 documentary on the film’s production, featuring Aardman Animations cofounder Peter Lord
• Chaplin Studios: Creative Freedom by Design, a new interview program featuring visual effects expert Craig Barron
• Archival footage from the production of City Lights, including film from the set, with audio commentary by Chaplin historian Hooman Mehran; a costume test; a rehearsal; and a complete scene not used in the film
• Excerpt from Chaplin’s short film The Champion (1915), along with footage of the director with boxing stars at Chaplin Studios in 1918
• Trailers

City Lights is out now from Criterion Editions